Dear Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl:
I’ve read quite a lot about you in the media; I even wrote an opinion column about you in the Express-News (“Sorry, Mr. President; Bergdahl swap still wrong,” June 15). Since you and your lawyer have been rather descriptive about your situation, including your experiences while a captive of the Taliban, I thought I’d correspond directly with you — soldier to soldier, so to speak.
But first, please permit me to give you some background — a little context, if you will — so we start out on somewhat of an even footing in terms of our backgrounds and motivations leading to our experiences as members of the U.S. military.
You’re a young man; I sometimes describe myself as an old fart. I’ve spent more than seven decades in the military in some capacity. Two of those decades were as a proud military “brat,” having been born to an Army Air Corps master sergeant during World War II. After completing Air Force ROTC, I proudly spent the next three decades on active duty, traipsing with (and sometimes without) my family on duty assignments across the U.S. and the rest of the world. For the past two decades. I’ve proudly been in retired status, ready and willing to serve again if called to do so.
I don’t pretend to know you, and while I have served in war zones in support of combat soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, I likely have not experienced your level of fear and stress from relatively close contact with our country’s enemies — and certainly not as a captive.
Having said all this, however, I simply cannot comprehend or otherwise condone what you did in leaving your post and your fellow soldiers in combat. You brought extreme dishonor to your uniform and to your country, and I know that you know this.
In this spirit, I ask that you stop the deceptive theatrics and legal perfidy, apparently designed to mitigate the import of your behavior. To claim that in deserting your post and comrades, you were taking a stroll through the Afghanistan countryside looking for a general officer to complain about combat conditions is disingenuous to the point of insult. And to assert that it was not your intent, in the words of your lawyer, “to remain away from the Army permanently” is the essence of intellectual deceitfulness for the sake of diminishing the true nature of your actions.
As if the illusion of relevance was not complete, you have expounded upon your internment as a “prisoner of war” without any reference to your culpability in being captured. Had you honorably done your duty and not left your post and your team, you would not have experienced such adversity.
But this was not the last of your tales of woe as a result of your own malfeasance. While I abhor the callous, cruel treatment you suffered at the hands of your captors for more than five years, your laments regarding weight loss, dirty clothes, meals of rice and noodles, and only two bottles of water a day likely would not compare with the deprivations suffered by other American prisoners of war.
Sergeant, as frank — even blunt — as my words may seem, I’d like you to know that they reflect a deep concern for the emotional pain and professional embarrassment you must now be experiencing. You and I are soldiers, and straightforward honesty is essentially all we know. We would be disrespectful to each other if it were otherwise.
In closing, I write you this letter because you and I were once comrades in arms, and that means something to me. Tragically, this is likely as much in common as you and I will ever have.
Sincerely and sadly,
Retired Col. Bennie J.
Wilson III, U.S. Air Force
