Bowe Bergdahl

He was then assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

According to a fellow soldier, Specialist Jason Fry, Bergdahl, whom Fry described as a loner but "focused and well-behaved", told him before deploying to Afghanistan: "If this deployment is lame, I'm just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan."

Instead of socializing with his comrades during Thanksgiving, he studied maps of Afghanistan.

Beaudry Robert "Bowe" Bergdahl (born March 28, 1986) is a former United States Army soldier who was held captive from 2009 to 2014 by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Bergdahl was born in 1986 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

He is of Norwegian and Swedish ancestry.

He has an older sister.

Both Bergdahl and his sister were home schooled by their mother in Hailey, Idaho.

The family attended Sovereign Redeemer Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Bergdahl received a GED certificate through the College of Southern Idaho.

As an adult, Bergdahl studied and practiced fencing and martial arts before changing to ballet classes at the Sun Valley Ballet School in Ketchum, Idaho.

In 2006, Bergdahl entered basic training in the United States Coast Guard but was discharged after twenty-six days for psychological reasons, receiving an "uncharacterized discharge" as an entry-level separation.

He spent time in a Buddhist monastery between 2007 and 2008.

In 2008, Bergdahl enlisted in the United States Army and graduated from the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Bergdahl was captured after deserting his post on June 30, 2009.

The circumstances under which Bergdahl went missing and how he was captured by the Taliban have since become subjects of intense media scrutiny.

Bergdahl's unit deployed to outpost Mest-Malak in May 2009, where they conducted counterinsurgency operations.

Bergdahl began learning to speak Pashto and, according to Fry, "to gravitate away from his unit [spending] more time with the Afghans than he did with his platoon".

Bergdahl's father described his son to military investigators as "psychologically isolated".

On June 25, 2009, Bergdahl's battalion suffered its first casualty: First Lieutenant Brian Bradshaw was killed by a roadside bomb near the village of Yaya Kheyl, not far from Bergdahl's outpost.

Bergdahl's father believes that Bradshaw and Bergdahl had grown close at the National Training Center and that Bradshaw's death darkened Bergdahl's mood.

On June 27, 2009, Bergdahl sent an e-mail to his parents before he was captured:

Bob Bergdahl responded to his son's final message not long after he received it:

A former senior military officer briefed on the investigation into Bergdahl's disappearance stated that on the night he went missing, Bergdahl left a note.

The existence of such a note was disputed by the Obama administration during a meeting with Congress on the release of Bergdahl, according to Senator Saxby Chambliss.

In his sworn statement, Bergdahl denied leaving a note.

Investigating officer Major General Kenneth Dahl acknowledged that there was no evidence of his leaving a note.

Bergdahl walked away from his battalion on the night of June 30, 2009, at observation post (OP) Mest near the town of Yahya Kheyl in Paktika Province.

Accounts of his capture differ.

In a video, Bergdahl said he was captured when he fell behind on a patrol.

Taliban sources allege he was ambushed after becoming drunk off base; U.S. military sources deny that claim, stating, "The Taliban are known for lying and what they are claiming [is] not true."

A Department of Defense spokesperson said, "I'm glad to see he appears unharmed, but again, this is a Taliban propaganda video. They are exploiting the soldier in violation of international law."

Other sources said Bergdahl walked off base after his shift or that he was grabbed from a latrine.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Defense attributed his disappearance to "walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts and was believed to have been taken prisoner".

He was released on May 31, 2014, as part of a prisoner exchange for five high ranking Taliban members who were being held at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Bergdahl was tried by general court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, and on October 16, 2017, he entered a guilty plea before a military judge at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

On November 3, 2017, he was sentenced to be dishonorably discharged, reduced in rank to private and fined $1,000 per month from his pay for ten months, with no prison time.

The fine and reduction in rank took effect immediately, while the discharge was stayed pending appeals to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals and later to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which affirmed the sentence on August 27, 2020.

Bergdahl then filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to have a U.S. federal judge review his sentence.

On July 25, 2023, the judge issued a ruling that voided his 2017 court-martial conviction.