He attempted to join the French Foreign Legion and later the US Coast Guard in 2006 but was discharged within a month.
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After training at Fort Benning in Georgia, he was assigned to the 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division.
Titled Dustwun, the second series focuses on a former American prisoner of war whose actions after being captured by the Taliban are alleged to have resulted in the deaths of six American soldiers. Maxim broke the story that this may be the new topic for their upcoming season and Koenig and co. freaked. He was charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy earlier this year.
“They were driving along the road, and I can’t tell you what set them off, I can’t tell you how they spotted me, I don’t, I don’t know, they just – they deviated, came off the road, came towards me”, he said.
The private first class said he had serious concerns over bad leadership over his unit. Besides, as he describes, he had a unique opportunity to prove his mettle as a soldier: “I had this fantastic idea that I was going to prove to the world that I was the real thing”. “All those guys out there who go to the movies and watch those movies, they all want to be that, but I wanted to prove that I was that”. Instead, he got lost in the mountains; the sun rose to find him alone in the Afghan desert, with no cover; it wasn’t long before a group of armed Taliban operatives on motorcycles found him. “Within days – within hours of his rescue, in fact – people began saying that we shouldn’t be celebrating him, because Bowe Bergdahl deliberately walked off his post into hostile territory”.
It’s nearly a throwaway, that ‘whatever, ‘ but it’s also stark enough to make you wonder if it implies judgment, a potentially clouding judgment, about all these rules and regulations. I can’t risk that. “It’s like you’re standing there screaming in your mind”.
The 29-year-old was detained by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network and is the only American in uniform held by insurgents in Afghanistan.
The big point of conflict of this story: Is Bergdahl’s description of what’s happening around him believable?
Once in the helicopter, he wrote the letters “SF?”
On Thursday, Bergdahl recalled how he started to realize the gravity of what he did after he deserted his military base in June 2009.
In this image made from video obtained from Voice Of Jihad Website, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, sits in a vehicle guarded by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan. However, an Army officer has recommended that Bergdahl’s case be referred to a special court martial, which is a misdemeanor-level forum.
Home safe in the USA now, he faces a court-martial and potential life sentence for leaving his base.
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His story continues to be politically divisive on the U.S., with the Serial podcast coming on the same day Republican politicans accused President Obama of using Guantanamo inmates for the prisoner swap as part of his plan to close the prison.
