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Re: Bowe enlisted in the Coast Guard and left after 26 days due to psychological reasons

By: clo in FFFT | Recommend this post (0)
Thu, 12 Jun 14 4:01 AM | 48 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Food For Further Thought 		Msg. 64593 of 65535
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Before he became a Taliban prisoner, before he wrote in his journal “I am the lone wolf of deadly nothingness,” before he joined the Army, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was discharged from the Coast Guard for psychological reasons, said close friends who were worried about his emotional health at the time.

The 2006 discharge and a trove of Bergdahl’s writing — his handwritten journal along with essays, stories and e-mails provided to The Washington Post — paint a portrait of a deeply complicated and fragile young man who was by his own account struggling to maintain his mental stability from the start of basic training until the moment he walked off his post in eastern Afghanistan in 2009.

“I’m worried,” he wrote in one journal entry before he deployed. “The closer I get to ship day, the calmer the voices are. I’m reverting. I’m getting colder. My feelings are being flushed with the frozen logic and the training, all the unfeeling cold judgment of the darkness.”

A few pages later, he wrote: “I will not lose this mind, this world I have deep inside. I will not lose this passion of beauty.”

At another point, using his often un­or­tho­dox spelling, he wrote: “Trying to keep my self togeather. I’m so tired of the blackness, but what will happen to me without it. Bloody hell why do I keep thinking of this over and over.”

more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/bergdahls-writings-reveal-a-fragile-young-man/2014/06/11/fb9349fe-f165-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Bowe enlisted in the Coast Guard and left after 26 days due to psychological reasons
By: clo in FFFT
Thu, 12 Jun 14 3:54 AM 		Msg. 64591 of 65535

Bowe Bergdahl previously washed out of Coast Guard, new Post story reports
BY DAN LAMOTHE
June 11 at 11:10 am

Three years before Army. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl disappeared from his small military outpost in eastern Afghanistan, he enlisted in the Coast Guard and left after 26 days due to psychological reasons, according to a new Washington Post story published Wednesday.

The story reports exclusively that Bergdahl received an “uncharacterized discharge,” which applies to individuals who are released from duty before completing 180 days of service. No reason was specified, but friends of Bergdahl told The Post that they were worried about his emotional health at the time.

Bergdahl’s fleeting time in the Coast Guard had not been reported previously. It raises anew questions about how he later was approved to join the Army and deployed with an infantry unit to a volatile area of eastern Afghanistan in 2009. 

Bergdahl’s past in the Coast Guard also underscores how little is known about the only U.S. soldier who was held by the Taliban. He was recovered May 31 by U.S. Special Forces as part of a swap in which the United States released five Taliban officials. The move has infuriated some lawmakers and some current and retired U.S. soldiers, who have described Bergdahl as a deserter and say he should not have been swapped for senior Taliban.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/06/11/bowe-bergdahl-previously-washed-out-of-coast-guard-new-post-story-reports/?hpid=z2

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