S02 - Ep. 1: DUSTWUN

Serial

Serial Productions & The New York Times

True Crime, News, Society & Culture

4.5 • 81.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2015

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the middle of the night, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl grabs a notebook, snacks, water, some cash. Then he quietly slips off a remote U.S. Army outpost in eastern Afghanistan and into the dark, open desert. About 20 minutes later, it occurs to him: he’s in over his head.

Transcript

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0:00.0	About a year and a half ago, clips from this video appeared on every major news broadcast.
0:07.0	It showed the rescue of a guy named Bo Bergdahl.
0:09.8	He was the US soldier who was captured by the Taliban and held captive for just shy of five years.
0:15.8	The Taliban made the video.
0:18.1	The first thing you see is a couple of guys in traditional Afghan clothes.
0:21.6	They've got scarves on their heads or covering their faces and
0:24.4	they're holding machine guns. They're standing next to a silver pickup truck.
0:29.0	The front hood is up. In the back seat of the truck, the door is open. A bare-headed figure is sitting
0:35.6	with his knees up against the seat in front of him. The camera closes in and you see this pale
0:40.3	young man. And that's Bergdahl. His head is shaved. He looks sort of like a
0:45.0	cult leader from a 70s movie. He can't keep his eyes open properly. They're
0:49.7	bothering him. He keeps blinking and rubbing them.
0:53.0	A wider shot shows that the scrubby rocky hills all around the truck are dotted with other guys, Taliban,
0:58.0	holding rifles or rocket-propelled grenades.
1:01.0	One or two of the guys lean in to where Burghol is sitting and
1:06.8	they're talking to him. He's looking at their faces. One guy says something in
1:10.7	Pashto, which is translated on screen as,
1:13.6	don't come back to Afghanistan.
1:17.2	What I've heard since is that the guy said,
1:19.2	do not come back to Afghanistan.
1:21.4	You will not get out alive.
1:23.0	Black spots appear in the cloudy sky,
	...

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