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Soldier who served with Bergdahl says he “fled the outpost on foot. He deserted.”

Jun 2, 2014 1:59 pm By Robert Spencer

Bergdahl prisoner“For five years, soldiers have been forced to stay silent about the disappearance and search for Bergdahl.” Why? Who forced them to stay silent? What were they trying to hide?

“We Lost Soldiers in the Hunt for Bergdahl, a Guy Who Walked Off in the Dead of Night,” by Nathan Bradley Bethea, Daily Beast, June 2, 2014:

For five years, soldiers have been forced to stay silent about the disappearance and search for Bergdahl. Now we can talk about what really happened.

It was June 30, 2009, and I was in the city of Sharana, the capitol of Paktika province in Afghanistan. As I stepped out of a decrepit office building into a perfect sunny day, a member of my team started talking into his radio. “Say that again,” he said. “There’s an American soldier missing?”

There was. His name was Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, the only prisoner of war in the Afghan theater of operations. His release from Taliban custody on May 31 marks the end of a nearly five-year-old story for the soldiers of his unit, the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. I served in the same battalion in Afghanistan and participated in the attempts to retrieve him throughout the summer of 2009. After we redeployed, every member of my brigade combat team received an order that we were not allowed to discuss what happened to Bergdahl for fear of endangering him. He is safe, and now it is time to speak the truth.

And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.

On the night prior to his capture, Bergdahl pulled guard duty at OP Mest, a small outpost about two hours south of the provincial capitol. The base resembled a wagon circle of armored vehicles with some razor wire strung around them. A guard tower sat high up on a nearby hill, but the outpost itself was no fortress. Besides the tower, the only hard structure that I saw in July 2009 was a plywood shed filled with bottled water. Soldiers either slept in poncho tents or inside their vehicles.

The next morning, Bergdahl failed to show for the morning roll call. The soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Blackfoot Company discovered his rifle, helmet, body armor and web gear in a neat stack. He had, however, taken his compass. His fellow soldiers later mentioned his stated desire to walk from Afghanistan to India.

The Daily Beast’s Christopher Dickey later wrote that “[w]hether Bergdahl…just walked away from his base or was lagging behind on a patrol at the time of his capture remains an open and fiercely debated question.” Not to me and the members of my unit. Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not “lag behind on a patrol,” as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.

Our deployment was hectic and intense in the initial months, but no one could have predicted that a soldier would simply wander off. Looking back on those first 12 weeks, our slice of the war in the vicinity of Sharana resembles a perfectly still snow-globe—a diorama in miniature of all the dust-coated outposts, treeless brown mountains and adobe castles in Paktika province—and between June 25 and June 30, all the forces of nature conspired to turn it over and shake it. On June 25, we suffered our battalion’s first fatality, a platoon leader named First Lieutenant Brian Bradshaw. Five days later, Bergdahl walked away.

His disappearance translated into daily search missions across the entire Afghanistan theater of operations, particularly ours. The combat platoons in our battalion spent the next month on daily helicopter-insertion search missions (called “air assaults”) trying to scour villages for signs of him. Each operations would send multiple platoons and every enabler available in pursuit: radio intercept teams, military working dogs, professional anthropologists used as intelligence gathering teams, Afghan sources in disguise. They would be out for at least 24 hours. I know of some who were on mission for 10 days at a stretch. In July, the temperature was well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit each day.

These cobbled-together units’ task was to search villages one after another. They often took rifle and mortar fire from insurgents, or perhaps just angry locals. They intermittently received resupply from soot-coated Mi-17s piloted by Russian contractors, many of whom were Soviet veterans of Afghanistan. It was hard, dirty and dangerous work. The searches enraged the local civilian population and derailed the counterinsurgency operations taking place at the time. At every juncture I remember the soldiers involved asking why we were burning so much gasoline trying to find a guy who had abandoned his unit in the first place. The war was already absurd and quixotic, but the hunt for Bergdahl was even more infuriating because it was all the result of some kid doing something unnecessary by his own volition….

I forgave Bergdahl because it was the only way to move on. I wouldn’t wish his fate on anyone. I hope that, in time, my comrades can make peace with him, too. That peace will look different for every person. We may have all come home, but learning to leave the war behind is not a quick or easy thing. Some will struggle with it for the rest of their lives. Some will never have the opportunity.

And Bergdahl, all I can say is this: Welcome back. I’m glad it’s over. There was a spot reserved for you on the return flight, but we had to leave without you, man. You’re probably going to have to find your own way home.

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Filed Under: Afghanistan, Taliban Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. mariam rove says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 2:09 pm

    I read about this earlier. This is awful. If this is the case this guy not only caused the death of other solders, but he is also responsible for a bunch of vile terrorists to get off easy. Disgusting. M

    • BlueRaven says

      Jun 2, 2014 at 3:50 pm

      Very good point MR

  2. weavo2 says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 2:16 pm

    This traitor should move to Russia and link up with Snowden.

  3. islamisdeath says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 2:19 pm

    Disgusting whiny assed little muslim traitor. Getting a royal welcome while 6 men died for his sorry butt. Obama made this trade because this POS is muslim and it gave him the opportunity to realease 5 of the worst the demonic taliban have to offer. This “soldier” deserted and the trade is just one more blatant sign of obama’s treason.

    barack HUSSEIN obam, traitor and enemy of the country the braindead left elected him to lead. Be happy ye braindead our demise is nearer than you think!

  4. jihad3tracker says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 2:21 pm

    Now the backstory is coming out — as anyone with a nickel’s worth of smarts knew it would.

    But our Prez-in-Chief’s capacity for vetting any important action has obviously dropped into a pit of quicksand.

    Not surprising, given the disasters he has so abundantly heaped on Americans… and reminding readers here, I am a lifelong Democrat who wishes we could dig up FDR or Truman and reanimate them to sit in the Oval Office.

  5. medina says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 2:50 pm

    The ballet dancing boy who grew up in a Unabomber cabin really wanted to join the Peace Corps or the French Foreign Legion. Doesn’t the military screen these people any more?

  6. David G. Huft says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 2:50 pm

    Mac-101 asks: “What am I missin?”

    Answer: The “g”

  7. Salah says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 2:57 pm

    “And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.”

    This statement must be confirmed by a judge. Once confirmed, this traitor (and ALL traitors, especially in the WH) must be executed.

  8. CogitoErgoSum says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 3:21 pm

    I’m now becoming more and more certain as to what to think about this Berghdahl …and it’s not good. Five top level Taliban members for one deserter!!! What was Obama thinking? Is anybody advising this President ….aside from the Muslim Brotherhood? Two and a half more years of life and death decisions to come from a man who is increasingly giving indications of being a crypto-Muslim. Obama owes the American people an explanation of all this that is a lot better than what he has given so far. He is sworn to uphold the laws of the U.S. …..not to bend and break them at his whim. Obama has definitely brought change to America….and he’s making it harder and harder for the next President to deal with the mess that’s left. My thoughts are running even more in a direction that they were already headed. Bergdahl is not the only traitor in this case.

  9. Fitz says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 3:48 pm

    I am not an American citizen but the President, nominally at least, is the leader of the free world to which I belong. Tell me if I’m wrong but making deals with terrorists, risking and it seems losing lives to rescue a deserter who’s aided the enemy – is thus President a traitor? And not just to Americans but to all of us?

    • islamisdeath says

      Jun 2, 2014 at 10:43 pm

      Yes this president is a traitor.

  10. Fitz says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 3:48 pm

    I am not an American citizen but the President, nominally at least, is the leader of the free world to which I belong. Tell me if I’m wrong but making deals with terrorists, risking and it seems losing lives to rescue a deserter who’s aided the enemy – is this President a traitor? And not just to Americans but to all of us?

  11. RG says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 3:55 pm

    What’s really beyond the pale is that Obama had to know all of the minute details of this traitor’s desertion activities–he had to know!!! Obama’s closest friends and allies are all MUSLIMS!!!!! To deny that as a fact is to live in some kind of la la land!!! That’s why he ordered this done in secret! Just imagine the uproar in Congress (both Dems and Repubs) if they had been informed that 5 critically vicious Talibans were about to be released from Gitmo, so that a deserter and traitor could come home to a “hero’s welcome”!!! So let’s hope somebody in Congress really wakes up to reality and investigates this travesty!

  12. Angemon says

    Jun 2, 2014 at 5:45 pm

    There’s seems to exist enough evidence to believe that Bergdahl is a turncoat who deserted his post and went to support, if not fight for, enemy forces. My (rhetorical) questions are a), how many potential Bergdahls and Nidal Hasans are there in the US military and b), what’s being done about it? I’m guessing the answer for both it’s either “don’t ask, don’t tell” or “only racist islamophobes would ask that. Are you a racist islamophobe?”.

  13. Tams says

    Jun 3, 2014 at 9:49 am

    He is a traitor in the true definition sense of it. Snowden, however is not a traitor. Don’t let the media lead you to believe their rhetoric. He is a true patriot who stood up for what he saw and his fellow American’s. Bowe IS a traitor and in the photo above of him I am reminded on the yearly pilgrimage (the hajj) where Muslim men “purify” themselves by shaving their heads, washing, etc……In my opinion—he submitted to Islam, and is now a practicing Muslim with very close ties to the Taliban. I also believe that in the next few years, if not sooner we will see this man involved, along with his Muslim daddy involved in terrorist activities.

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