[Rhodes22-list] Bush's Service Record

[Lloyd Crowther]

As an interesting aside to the deserter discussion, I was a part-time cop in
a small New Hampshire town in the late '70's.  We had had a girl murdered on
one of the Town's many woods' roads long before I arrived on the scene so
one of my duties every weekend night was to drive the cruiser over all the
woods' roads, stop and identify all the lovers, and ask the girls if they
were there of their own free will.  I arrested eight or ten male military
deserters; they basically were young kids who came from elsewhere to work in
places like MacDonald's.  They always used drivers licenses for
identification, sometimes out-of-state licenses.  Apparently they thought us
rube cops had no way of checking anything except that their picture agreed
with their face, but when I radioed the male driver's license numbers in to
the NH police data base to confirm their identifications, I got all kinds of
stuff back including if they were wanted for desertion or anything else.  So
off to jail the deserters would go to wait for the Feds.  Never knew what
happened to any of them but I do know that the data base was updated every
day; a couple of Marines partying in our friendly woods with our
over-friendly local gals had been wanted for only a day or two as I recall.

Lloyd

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Neil Townsley" <natown at wildmail.com>
To: <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2004 11:23 AM
Subject: Re: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Bush's Service Record


Slim,
To expand on Rummy's answer, as he said it depends on the timing. As
an Army company commander during the Vietman era (stateside) I had to
handle a few of these. If a person was gone only a couple of days and
came back on his own, it was usually taken care of administratively
with a fine and reduction in rank but no prison time. If he was gone
over a month and civil or military police had to go get him it was
usually considered desertion and punished as Rummy said. Between
these examples the punishment was a judgement call by the commander
and considered things like the reason for the AWOL, if it was the
first time, how good a soldier he was, did he ever plan to return,
etc.
Neil Townsley

Rummy wrote:
Slim,
Depends on the timing. AWOL (absent without leave) during the Vietnam
era
was considered desertion, even if it was stateside. The crime was a
court
martial offense and would get you a lot of time in some very nasty
military
prisons and a dishonorable discharge. It probably would have ruined
the person's
life as no employer would ever hire him, let alone a country make
him president.
Had a great Saturday sailing with Capt. Bob Keller again. Winds were
in the
8 to 12 range and a good time was had by all.

Rummy
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