On Feb. 5, 1991, something strange happened in central Texas. Louisiana’s 256th Infantry Brigade was at Fort Hood—training for an upcoming deployment in Saudi Arabia—when 67 guardsmen went AWOL.

They were on leave, visiting their families in Louisiana. They did not return to service when their leave ended. In other words — mutiny. And it wasn’t the last time.

The full-time Army has a strained relationship with the part-time Reserve and National Guard. There’ve been at least two reserve mutinies since 1991.

Military officials learned a valuable lesson about the consequences of long and irregular deployments during Vietnam. Bad morale, drug abuse and soldiers killing their own officers led the Pentagon to re-evaluate its deployment policies.

After the Vietnam War, the Pentagon implemented a Total Force Policy. Under this new directive, the Army would rely more on its reserve forces. The National Guard and Army Reserve would see more frontline combat, and lessen the stress on the regular Army.

The problem was the military didn’t back up the plan with more training. The Pentagon expected its reserve forces to perform like regular soldiers, but didn’t give the reserves proper support.

This lack of support and training has led to a wide range of discipline problems. The two largest mutinies in recent American military history both took place within the Army’s reserve forces.

For the soldiers of the 256th Infantry Brigade, the transition into a war-fighting force was a difficult one. The reservists went to Louisiana newspapers and TV stations and complained about life in the military.

Central Texas was cold and muddy, they said. The food was bad and their commanders were mean. The same stuff that everyone in the Army complains about.

But most soldiers don’t desert. Now these troops were in trouble and were making it worse by talking to the press.

America was fighting a war in the desert with a power-mad dictator. The troops’ whining didn’t go over well. The public turned against them, their commander called them “crybabies,” and the troops returned to Fort Hood to face punishment.

They had deserted. That’s a serious military crime—one punishable by court martial or death. But these soldiers were lucky. The National Guard dismissed them, giving them exactly what they wanted.