By Gene J. Koprowski

(February 11, 2004) -- Even after the White House released some of President Bush's pay records from the early 1970s, portions of the record of his military service are apparently missing. This, some in the press have averred, is suspicious. Someone powerful must be covering up something nefarious here.

Well, as a former Naval Reserve officer, I have to smile. The reality is that the guard and reserves are very flexible when it comes to scheduling drills -- especially for commissioned officers with needed skills -- and that reserve soldiers and sailors routinely make up drill dates during a particular fiscal year.

If they cannot make up the drills, but have properly notified their commanding officers, in advance of their drill weekends, they simply finish the fiscal year without the minimum amount of points.

Does this mean that they were "AWOL," (absent without leave)? Far from it. Rather, it means that they will simply have a harder time accumulating the required total points to retire with a military pension as a reservist.

During my time in the reserves, I recall officers and enlisted personnel routinely missing weekend drills, and rescheduling them, either on their own time, or by stacking them together the next month as a four-day drill weekend, or even by adding them to their two-week annual training tour.

The other thing that anyone who has ever been in the reserves or guard will tell you is that the individual member is alone responsible for keeping his service record in order. Many reserve officers have been passed over for promotion during the years because the Pentagon lost papers attesting to their duty stations, or medals, or performance evaluations, known as fitness reports, or FITREPS.

The Navy Reserve's own Web site even advises those who are close to a promotion to send copies of their official records to the promotion board!

So, to make an issue out of the fact that some records in the president's service record are missing is to make an uninformed comment. It does not reflect the reality that the soldiers and sailors who serve every month face.

An issue has also been made that Mr. Bush was not given a rating because he was "not observed" during a particular drill period.

This is taking military language -- and mangling it. Not observed is a common recommendation on fitness reports for personnel, also known as NOB. It means simply that someone served less than a year in a particular unit, and, if someone serves a short stint, regulations do not require the commanding officer to issue a detailed report of the soldier or sailor's performance during that period. It does not mean that no one saw him or observed him on base.

Usually, it is the military that is mocked for making a mess of the English language. But it looks like the press is doing a pretty good job of it with this. That's just my observation. I'd have to say the true facts about life in the reserves, and some much-needed perspective, are what have been AWOL from many of the media's articles on this important story.

Gene J. Koprowski covers science and technology for UPI from Chicago and is and a former U.S. Naval Reserve officer.

 
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