No Ordinary Dog by Will Chesney

Author:Will Chesney [Chesney, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

On June 30, 2009, FOB Sharana—and, subsequently, the entire U.S. military—was rocked by the news that an American soldier named Bowe Bergdahl had been reported missing. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Bergdahl; no one did. But over the ensuing days, months, and years, he’d become famous—or infamous—in military circles.

Private Bergdahl was a young guy, twenty-three years old, who had enlisted in the army in 2008. But that was not his first experience with the military—previously, he’d enlisted in the Coast Guard but did not even make it through basic training. Why or how he ended up in the army is anyone’s guess. Regardless, Bergdahl eventually was assigned to the 501st Infantry Regiment and sent to Afghanistan on his deployment. Had he not decided to stroll away from his post one night, I doubt our paths ever would have crossed. I mean, not that I ever met the guy, but his actions had a profound impact on me and a lot of other people, sometimes with grave consequences.

The circumstances surrounding Bergdahl’s disappearance were a source of debate almost from the beginning. Did he walk away from his post? Was he captured while on patrol? Around the base, it was generally accepted that Bergdahl had simply deserted. Regardless, it wasn’t long—fewer than twenty-four hours—before word came down that he had landed in the hands of the Taliban. With that news came an abrupt shift in the war in Afghanistan. Suddenly, we weren’t just looking for insurgents and other Taliban forces and generally trying to root out the baddest of bad guys throughout the country. Instead, it seemed, the entire might of the U.S. military was temporarily redirected to a singular cause:

Find Private Bergdahl and bring him home.

Understandably, there was an urgency to the mission—and to call it a mission was to undersell the task; it was actually an objective that included dozens of missions. Generally speaking, the longer a captive remained missing, the less likely he was ever to be found alive.

For the remainder of that deployment, much of our work revolved around trying to rescue Bergdahl. This led to many dry holes and a lot of nights without contact, as well as some nights with unanticipated and violent contact. I’ll be candid here: it was tough on morale. Bergdahl’s actions put a lot of people at risk. I understood the importance of finding him. Politically speaking, Bergdahl’s capture was a nightmare for the U.S. military. And from a human standpoint, it was the right thing to do. Bergdahl was an American. Thousands of miles away, back in the States, he had a mom and dad who hoped to see him again. It was our job to bring him home.

On the night of July 9, 2009, just ten days after Bergdahl was taken captive, an assault force was dispatched on a hostage rescue mission. Now, the truth is, for the last two months of that deployment, basically everything we did revolved around the search for Bergdahl, so it would not be inaccurate to say that every operation was, in fact, a hostage rescue operation.

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