Fellow Soldiers of US POW Bowe Bergdahl speak out: "Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down."

The rest of the story about SGT Bowe Bergdahl" is now coming out.  Amazing stuff - what do you think?

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.

Read the rest of the story here.


Update - The Daily Mail is all over the story:

'Bowe Bergdahl deserted and these Americans lost their lives searching for him': The bitter backlash from soldiers who served with Taliban POW as the SIX men who were killed looking for him are revealed

• The Facebook group 'Bowe Bergdahl is NOT hero!' has 5,400 members
• Men who served in his unit in Afghanistan are now emerging to say they believe Bergdahl deserted before he was captured
• Bergdahl e-mailed his parents saying he 'was ashamed to be an American'
• Military seems to acknowledge Bergdahl, 28, could have committed some kind of violation
• However, officials say he likely won't be punished: 'five years is enough'
• Former squad leader said Bergdahl always talked about seeing what was on the other side of the mountains

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2645922/Bowe-Bergdahl-deserted-Americans-lost-lives-searching-The-bitter-backlash-soldiers-served-Taliban-POW-SIX-men-killed-looking-revealed.html#ixzz33UK9dU00