Newly released writings from Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl reveal his mindset and emotions prior to and during his time serving in Afghanistan, CBS’ "Evening News" reported Wednesday.
The Washington Post published Bergdahl’s writings after they received them from an Oregon woman claiming to be a close friend of his. The woman says she chose to share his writings in order to protect him.
The writings give insight into the mind of a clearly troubled Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was recently rescued after being held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan for five years. Previous to his capture, Bergdahl left his fellow troops during their service there.
"I’m worried. The closer I get to ship day, the calmer the voices are. I’m reverting. I’m getting colder," Bergdahl wrote in one journal entry before his deployment.
Another entry shows Bergdahl’s internal mental struggles. "I will not lose this mind, this world I have deep inside. I will not lose this passion of beauty," he wrote.
Just two weeks before he left his fellow troops, Bergdahl sent an email to a friend that was partly coded. In it, Bergdahl gave reference to an unspecified plan and dreams of walking away somewhere, into "the artist’s painted world, hiding from the fields of blood and screams, hidden from the monster within himself."
"These thoughts insist on trying to overwhelm my mind…I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking blackness was all I had in front of me, that it would be blackness to the very last instant. I know this is not right. I know that there is light in this darkness, and that I can actually reach it if I keep walking, keep moving to it," he wrote to his friend in an email three days before he disappeared in Afghanistan. In that same email, he told his friend that he was looking at a map of Afghanistan and asked if he could wire money to her so she could protect it in case things got bad.