The OP Mess which seems to be a dusty, desolate and lonesome place. It is described in the first episode as being built on a hill, near a cemetery. The men go onto to say it was not only dusty and hot but also gave way to disease due to the flies and dust and inability to keep things adequately clean. It sounds like a very difficult and unpleasant place to be stationed due to environment more so than the tasks the soldiers had to undertake.
Bowe Bergdahl is said to have walked away because he wanted to cause a (Dustwun) Duty status Whereabouts Unknown. A Dustwun was called when a soldier went missing while on duty and this was treated as an emergency situation. Bergdahl formulated a plan to draw attention to his unit because he had concerns about the leadership to the point that he feared men’s lives might be at risk. He wanted to call for an investigation and felt that the situation was too dire to wait any longer and causing a Dustwun in OP MESS was necessary.He claims that nobody would have have taken him seriously because of his rank in the army but by causing such a stir that people in higher ranks would be obliged to listen and even believe him because of the risk he had taken.
Initially, I thought his decision was understandable because it seemed like such a great risk to take for some insignificant situation. Why would you walk into something so unknown? Bergdahl was most certainly aware of the consequences as he even mentions in the podcast that he was prepared for jail time because he felt at some point he would be justified. This all sounded very convincing to me. What he said about people not believing him because of his rank sounds convincing. In armies it is a top down situation for the sake of control and people do not usually question leadership because they are trained to simply take orders. However after reading the article by the Guardian where it mentions Bergdahl being very angry with the reaction of his superiors to things like uniform, I began to question his reasoning. The superiors might have had irrational demands in the heat and been very rude in their address but was it life threatening? I am not sure and that makes me want to know more about Bergdahl’s issues with the leadership.
After seeing the aerial footage of what the landscape looked like and the distance that he wanted to cover I was dumbstruck. It looked impossible. It was mountainous, desert like and mainly all looked pretty much the same which would be problematic for navigation for me. There is no to little signs of life and ontop of all of that it is a war torn country, so coming into contact with rebel forces seems somewhat expected. I have no fighting or weapon experience and even if that was the case I would have most likely be outnumbered. The distance and the hot climate would be another extremely difficult challenge for me as I am not close to fit enough to run 18 miles. I would have been easily fatigued and even before that I think I would be completely lost. It certainly would not have been possible for me to just set out alone but then again, I am not a soldier like Bergdahl. In the episode he is noted as having experience in high altitudes and long distance running. He also noted as being a meticulous planner by his team members, all which a factors which put him at a higher chance of surviving and making it to his destination. However there were many things at his disadvantage such as the weather- hot and dusty and just his unfamiliarity with the terrain. Despite being in Afghanistan he was still a foreigner who had only been there for a brief while so navigating and simply surviving in the environment I believe would have been a big problem. He is noted as having taken money for a bribe in case he encountered anyone alone the way but I do not think he considered how useless this would have been. Even if someone had see him, taken his money and left- word would definitely have spread and soon more people would be aware of his whereabouts. Another issue would have been communicating a bribe since he knew none of the languages of the country.
Bergdahl did not realise just how in over his head he was until he was already away from his base camp. Despite his obvious better ability than that of mine to potentially navigate through the dusty part of Afghanistan he was in- even he failed and was unable to do that. Half way in he became lost along the mountains and then went to far out into the desert with a change of plan. This change of plan also made me question his initial desire to draw attention to his platoon for the sake of a leadership crisis. If he was so confident that he would be justified and was actually right about leaders failures then why did he feel that it was necessary to then try and get some intelligence of enemy whereabouts? He mentioned wanting to be that guy that people saw on television and wanted to be because they were heroic but this seems to muddy his main reason for leaving OP MESS. Was it more a move to come across as brave or was maybe making too rash a decision in the midst of the moment? I am not sure but I am certainly doubting the validity of his argument and his judgment of going solo into a land largely unknown to him.
