Bowe's bitter heroes
Meet the soldiers who paid dearly to find Afghan deserter
THEY were everything Bowe Bergdahl wasn’t.
Army Sgt. Mark Allen had already done a tour in Iraq by 2009 — but the married dad voluntarily redeployed to Afghanistan because “he didn’t want his guys to go [back] alone,” a family pal said.
Navy Seal James “Jimmy” Hatch was the kind of leader who fighters seemed willing to follow anywhere. He has a Purple Heart and Bronze Star to prove it.
And soldier Jonathan Morita will tell you himself about the promising life he left behind, “going to school, working at a job,” when he got called up after already doing one stint in Iraq.
Over two days in July 2009, the three servicemen were sent to help search for Bergdahl, an emotionally unstable Army private who had gone missing from his remote infantry post in Afghanistan about a week earlier. Despite the group’s best efforts to track down the panic-prone 23year-old Idaho man in the terrorist-infested area, they came up empty-handed — and changed forever.
Their battles with Taliban snipers left Allen permanently paralyzed and unable to speak. Hatch still walks with a limp from a shattered right femur. Morita had to relearn how to brush his teeth and write because of mangled fingers on his right hand.
Bergdahl would return to the United States five years later as part of an infamous deal approved by then-President Barack Obama, which traded the soldier’s life for that of five Taliban leaders being held at Guantanamo Bay. At the time, Obama portrayed Bergdahl as a victim and even something of a hero.
Then it emerged that the “hero” purposely fled his post.
Allen, Hatch and Morita may give statements at his sentencing, set to begin Wednesday, on charges of desertion and endangering US troops in a military court at Fort Bragg, NC.
But Allen’s wife, Shannon, has already said it all. In a 2014 Facebook post alongside a heartbreaking photo of Allen in his dress blues in his wheelchair, next to her and their little girl, Shannon wrote: “Meet my husband, injuries directly brought to you by the actions of this traitor.
“He can’t give an account of what went down, because he can no longer speak,’’ she said of her husband. “Now, which guy is a ‘hero’ again?!? Sick.’’
MARK Allen, an Army National Guard sergeant, was the kind of guy who stood out among his colleagues long before he took a sniper bullet to his brain while looking for Bergdahl, said pal Robert Stokely. When Stokely lost his son, National Guard Sgt. Michael Stokely, in Iraq in 2005, Allen made sure to call to check in on him, the father recalled. Allen and his family still attend a memorial service held at Michael Stokely’s
grave every summer in Loganville, Ga., the dad added to the local Newnan Times-Herald.
“If you want to look at the best America has to offer, look at the Allen family,” Stokely said.
Allen, now 44, was in his second month of redeployment when he was shot on July 8, 2009. The cartridge went through his helmet and into his frontal lobe. It took several years of rehab before the dad of two, a onetime avid outdoorsman, could even return home.
In an emotional letter on the Web site GoFundMe a few years ago, Shannon Allen thanked donors for helping to raise money for a special coat for her husband, whose arms are bent in such a way that he can’t wear regular outerwear.
“He’s in there, alright, his voice and ability to communicate are just trapped inside,” she wrote of her paralyzed spouse.
When Bergdahl pleaded guilty to charges earlier this month, Shannon wept in the courtroom.
THE day after Mark Allen was injured, Jimmy Hatch and his team got a tip on Bergdahl’s possible location.
Looking back, Hatch told CNN, he had an instant bad feeling about the mission.
“Somebody’s going to get killed looking for this kid,” Hatch recalled thinking.
But Bergdahl “was an American, and he had a mom,” Hatch said. “And I didn’t want his mom to see him get his head chopped off on YouTube, you know what I mean?’’
In an ensuing gun battle with Taliban snipers, a beloved Army dog, Remco, was killed. Hatch, who was leading his platoon, was hit next by an AK-47 bullet.
“The K9 alerted us and was shot in the head, saving our lives. I got a few rounds off at the man who shot the K9, and then I was hit in the leg. The force of the bullet blew my femur apart,” Hatch, 50, later wrote on his blog. “At this point, my friends had to keep me from bleeding to death.”
Eighteen surgeries later, Hatch has a permanent limp.
He also has battled depression so severe that he contemplated suicide at least once — sticking the end of a gun in his mouth in front of his stricken wife.
To help cope with the trauma, Hatch started a nonprofit that benefits members of the military and service dogs.
ARMY Cpl. Jonathan Morita of California was dispatched the same day as Mark Allen to help hunt for Bergdahl.
Morita had been an Iraqi vet reservist — “at home enjoying life as a civilian” and attending college — when he was called up again to serve in Afghanistan.
He was wounded hunting for the missing soldier when a rocket-propelled grenade launched by a Taliban sniper shattered in his hand.
Morita said that, thanks to the attack, he still can’t bend his index finger or thumb on his hand, which prevents him from doing the most mundane of tasks.
He said he was particularly outraged last week, when Bergdahl pleaded guilty while trying to gain sympathy with the judge, insisting he never intended for anyone to get hurt looking for him.
“At the time, I had no intention of causing search and recovery operations,” Bergdahl said in court. “I didn’t think they would have any reason to search for one private.”
Morita scoffed at the deserter’s comments.
“Anybody who’s ever watched ‘Black Hawk Down’ would know that we do that,” he said.
MEANWHILE, Bergdahl has insisted that while, yes, he left camp, it was only to try to warn leadership nearly 20 miles away that his group was being subjected to dangerous practices by its commanders.
He admitted to the podcast “Serial’’ in 2015 that he decided to try to cover his tracks when and if he was found by his American comrades by lying that he had left camp to hunt for nearby buried explosives.
“Doing what I did is me saying that I am like, I dunno, Jason Bourne,” Bergdahl said.
He was soon found by the Taliban and held for five years, subjected to torture, including being kept in a cage, he has said.
Since his release, Bergdahl, now 31, has been on administrative duty at an Army base in San Antonio, Texas.
And, amazingly, he has found plenty to whine about.
He said in an interview in the Sunday Times of London that he resents being a paper-pusher.
“Here, it could be the guy I pass in the corridor who’s going to sign the paper that sends me away for life,’’ Bergdahl said. “At least the Taliban were honest enough to say, ‘I’m the guy who’s gonna cut your throat.’ ”
The deserter’s fate now rests in the hands of a military judge, Army Col. Jeffrey Nance.
Bergdahl faces up to life in prison on the endangeringtroops charge and as much as five years for desertion.
On Monday, Bergdahl’s lawyers asked Nance to toss the case completely because of alleged prejudice by President Trump, who has called Bergdahl a “dirty rotten traitor” and suggested he be tossed from a plane without a parachute.
Last week, the president said he couldn’t talk about the case anymore, then added, “But I think people have heard my comments in the past.’’
Nance recessed the court until Wednesday because of Trump’s statements, saying the president’s most recent comments were the equivalent of the president saying, “I shouldn’t comment on that, but I think everyone knows what I think on Bowe Bergdahl.”