Bowling with Bowe Bergdahl on Bragg
A Memory of Rollin' with the Most Hated Soldier in the Army at Dragon Lanes
Hello Crew of the USS Tom Clancy
I hope you enjoy this anecdote about Bowling with Bowe Bergdahl.
-Matt
(Apologies; I sent this on the email with a typo in the date, it has since been corrected).
On December 15, 2016, the day before another pre-trial hearing at Fort Bragg for the Bowe Bergdahl trial. It was the last hearing in a year of hearings, first at Fort Sam Houston and then at Fort Bragg. There was a month until the inauguration of Donald Trump, who’d used Bergdahl in the early stages of his campaign as an applause line and a talking point, which wasn’t that unusual, but his message was about shooting Bergdahl.
It was cold at Fort Bragg. The night before the 82nd Airborne division invited soldiers, families and press to a Christmas/holiday concert. Paratroopers roamed the area in the latest variation of the camouflage uniform, which had gone through several changes during the Global War on Terror and red berets, while others wore their Army Service Uniform, the business suit of the garrison Army.
Meanwhile, families and veterans in pin-packed hats posed for pictures with model paratroopers in full battle rattle and facepaint from the 82nd posed for pictures wearing parachutes and face-paint and guests could pose in front of the latest military hardware, including a desert tan dune buggy with a roll cage who’s angles spoke to the power of the triangle and Red Rudolph nose mounted on the grille.
Santa and his elf arrived to light the tree at All American headquarters for the 82nd Airborne Division. There was no sleigh, and they didn’t parachute in, instead choosing to rappel down the side of division headquarters. The All American Chorus, the 82nd Airborne Rock Band, and the rest of the 82nd Airborne band (a woodwind quintet, brass quartet, and full concert band) played tunes.
The next day, the soldiers and civilians of Fort Bragg finished their work before a long weekend. The previous weekend was the Army Navy football game in Philadelphia. Most of the Army brass attended and so did President Elect Donald Trump. West Point defeated Annapolis in the first Army victory over Navy in 14 years, which excited the ring-knocking cadre in the officer corps, making them magnanimously declare Friday, December 16 2016 a DONSA, in Army-speak, an acronym for Day of No Scheduled Activities.
The John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, which recruited and trained Green Berets and psychological warfare troops, had a potluck and barbecue. Special Forces soldiers brought their families to take pictures with Santa Claus in the lobby of the Headquarters. When not wearing the red suit, Santa was a captain on the guard staff. He’d picked up the suit for a good price and thought it was fun to be the good guy for once, since he normally had to be a heavy.
As the post prepared for a long weekend before Holiday leave, Bergdahl’s lawyers and the prosecution sat in the massive office building on the street that housed the headquarters for both FORCES COMMAND, led by General Abrams, and the Army’s reserve command, trying to get their secure computers set up in a secure room in the basement. They were all behind and Judge Nance was getting frustrated with the delays to trial—documents were secret, owned by many different parts of the government, and not everyone was eager to share. There was enough work for them all to pull all nighters—the prosecution, in fact, had brought on 10 more prosecutors, half of the lawyers on Fort Bragg, and an officer involved in the case estimated that if all the man hours invested in the case were billed-out like a law firm invoice, the costs for the legal proceedings since Bergdahl returned were in the millions of dollars.