Around 1997, SAF Provost called me up to attend as a witness for a AWOL / desertion case. I thought it involved one of the reservists serving with me at the time. When I called Provost, they would not release any information. So, I called those reservists whose numbers I had but none of them had issues.
It turned out that the case was from 1985 (about 12 years before) when I was still an NSF administering a reservist unit. I was shown a document indicating that I had visited a reservist AWOLee's home, and that he wasn't in. It bore my signature. I was then asked whether I made that visit.
'Yes.'
'How come you are so sure? Do you remember?'
'No. But since my signature is there, and I have never signed to anything I did not do, I must have been there.'
The provost WO was quite upset by this time. He asked. 'Did you follow up?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'Because I went ROD one month after that.' Silence. Then I asked. 'Have you called up MAJ H, who was my boss then? He would know a lot more.'
'No. We can't trace him.'
'Ha? I just met him last year when a mutual friend's daughter got married.' I said. 'I think he still lives at Normanton Park.'
'We.... Some records were destroyed.'
I was both amused and angry. I asked if there was a phone book in the office. There was. I turned to the page and there was MAJ H's entry; he was still living at Normantion Park.
The WO was red-faced by then, and soon let me go.
What was amazing was that the AWOLee / deserter had been 'on the run' for 12 years preceding his arrest at a police roadblock. He had, apparently, never left the country in all that time. His defence was that he never received any SAF100 of other call-up documents, and was never visited.
