Ok My situation is this when I was 19 I joined the service My recruiter went to my sons moms house and picked up his birth certif. I had completed basic training and was in AIT at Fort Rucker, Al. when I noticed my son was not in any of my records it actually said I had no children. So I went to my Drill sargent and asked him how to fix this he informed me that I needed to go to adminstrations and have them fix it, so the next day I went there and they informed me this was something my drill sargent needed to address, this went on back and forth for about 4 months and nothing was fixed so I went Awol and returned to my home state of maine to retrieve the information needed and returned to the base there in maine which they sent me to Fort Knox and at that point I was discharged with a OTH and RE-4 my question is this Is there a way I can return to service I have heard of waivors and upgrading

Couldn't you sort that out while at your unit?
What a strange reason to go AWOL.

No reason to go AWOL for that. It sounds like they were both giving you the run around. Your DI should have told you what you needed to get you son into DEERS. Once you got the paperwork sent to you at AIT, your DI could set you up with an appointment at admin so you could get your info updated. OR you could send a DA4187 with the paperwork to your PAC (admin section) and they could get the information entered.

To answer your question. You can get a waiver for ANYTHING. A waiver is not likely to be your course of action. You may be able to get your OTH changed to HON. That should be your first step. See your recruiter about this. Once your discharge status is changed you can work on getting your RE-4 removed or changed. Not sure how to do this. I would start with the recruiter. If that doesn't work, try your congressman. They should be able to get things moving if your recruiter is not.

Bottom line is, for something trivial like paperwork, you shouldn;t have gone AWOL. If you were only gone for a day or two it seems kinda harsh especially since you came back of your own accord. Though you should have gone back to your AIT location. Most likely you would have gotten NJP (Non Judicial Punishment), likely lost what rank you had but that would likely have been the end of it.

When i went back in they just sent me to knox no questions asked i was gone for more then two days it took 3 to get back to maine then about 2 weeks to get the birthcertifacate and the ssn card

Couldn't someone in Maine just have sent those documents to you? In any event I agree that your recruiter is a good place to start. At least he/she will be able to point you in the right direction to get your discharge status changed.

With RE-4, at this time, there is no way you can re-enlist. Sorry.

Thank you for all your help I am grateful for it