Clearing the Fog of War

Bergdahl read his rights at Fort Sam session

SAN ANTONIO — Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl met Wednesday with an investigator who is probing allegations of misconduct while the soldier was in Afghanistan.

Flanked by a military defense attorney, Capt. Alfredo Foster, and Yale Law School visiting lecturer Eugene Fidell, who is his civilian lawyer, Bergdahl sat in an office at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston.

Fidell said his client was read his rights as part of an interview with Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl. An audio recording was made during the question-and-answer session at the Army Criminal Investigation Command's office on the post.

“We've met all morning, we're on a lunch break and then we're going to resume the interview,” Fidell said, declining to say what questions Dahl asked. “But I can tell you he's been entirely cooperative with the process and has answered all questions.”

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Bergdahl hires attorney as investigator visits Fort Sam

SAN ANTONIO — Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has hired a high-profile attorney and may have met Wednesday with an investigator looking into allegations of misconduct while Bergdahl was in Afghanistan.

Lawyer Eugene Fidell denounced leaks by government officials as “disturbing” and likened some of the accusations against his client to the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth campaign that damaged former Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid.

“There are people who have spoken that have vilified him in the media, sometimes using their own names and sometimes not,” Fidell, a visiting lecturer at Yale, told the San Antonio Express-News. “He's been turned into a kind of punching bag in some circles, and my job is to defend him.”

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Bergdahl goes to work at Fort Sam Houston

SAN ANTONIO — A month after arriving in San Antonio for the third and final stage of his rehabilitation process, former prisoner of war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl went to work at a desk job Monday at U.S. Army North in San Antonio.

He'll perform administrative duties at the headquarters on Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, but it was unclear what precisely his job would entail.

“He's going to be doing soldier duties commensurate with his rank and qualifications,” said Don Manuszewski, a spokesman for Army North. “Like anybody else, he'll go through a period of training to go through our processes and procedures.”

The move ends six weeks of closely scrutinized counseling, four of them in San Antonio under an Army South program designed to slowly ease former prisoners back into society. He is living in noncommissioned officers quarters on Fort Sam and can come and go as he pleases from the post.

Read more here: http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/military/article/Bergdahl-goes-to-work-at-Fort-Sam-5621383.php

Bergdahl going out to S.A. restaurants, stores

 SAN ANTONIO — The Army said Wednesday that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the American POW released in a prisoner swap with the Taliban, has gone into San Antonio for dinners and other excursions, and that he has been welcomed by people he meets.

So far, Bergdahl has left Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston about 10 times as part of a carefully staged plan to help him readjust to freedom.

“I can't give you specifics, just because I don't want people camping out at those places, but he's gone to restaurants, he's gone to supermarkets, he's gone to stores out in town and he's gone to the same places on post,” Army South spokeswoman Arwen Consaul said.

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Bergdahl staying in S.A. as outpatient

SAN ANTONIO — The Army said Sunday that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the sole American prisoner of war of the Afghanistan War, is no longer an inpatient at Brooke Army Medical Center.

Yet even as his status shifted to that of an outpatient, visiting his medical team daily while living on Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, little else has changed.

Bergdahl still undergoes treatment in a highly structured program designed to help him overcome years of captivity and isolation. The Army hasn't said if he was tortured or mistreated.

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Army captain shot, wounded on Fort Sam Houston

A gunman fired up to nine shots wounding a female active-duty captain Monday outside the Army's medical training headquarters on Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, home to around 1,200 troops.

Police arrested a retired Army sergeant major within an hour of the shooting and recovered a handgun thought to have been used in the incident, but did not identify him or the victim.

The woman, an officer course instructor at the Army Medical Department Center and School, was in stable condition at the San Antonio Military Medical Center on Fort Sam after suffering multiple gunshot wounds.

It was the post's first shooting in 20 years.

“The last active shooter incident was in 1993,” said Phil Reidinger, a spokesman for the center and school. “An employee held a supervisor hostage, and after many hours of negotiation, the hostage-taker surrendered and the employee was not harmed.”

Army investigators, Air Force Security Forces and San Antonio police swarmed the post area after shots were fired at 2:50 p.m. in a veranda outside the instructor's office at the four-story AMEDD headquarters.

Just what precipitated the incident isn't clear, but San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said the suspect and victim were in a relationship.

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Army major found dead at Fort Sam

An active-duty U.S. Army major was found dead Monday in his dorm at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston.

In a brief statement, U.S. Army North said the officer was found at 7 a.m. after Fort Sam's fire department took a call about a water leak.

The Army did not identify the major pending notification of next of kin, and did not give a possible cause of death. The statement said major was found in his room at the Warrior Transition Battalion dorm, home to hundreds of wounded soldiers.

“Although foul play is not suspected at this point in the investigation, we have not completely ruled it out in order to conduct a complete and thorough investigation,” said Chris Grey, a spokesman with the Army's Criminal Investigation Command.

Since August 2011, 14 soldiers assigned to the battalion have died of wounds or illnesses, said Dewey Mitchell, a spokesman for the Army's Brooke Army Medical Center command.

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Fort Sam's Fiesta 'ready, resilient'

The budget sequester took the fireworks out of Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston's Fiesta celebration Sunday night, but that did nothing to dampen the event's festive spirit.

Hundreds of soldiers, families and friends converged on the post's historic Quadrangle late in the afternoon, many of them civilians wearing rows of shiny Fiesta medals.

The 323rd Army Band performed patriotic tunes as Fort Sam made the best of its most strained fiscal year in memory, and the crowd was treated to the U.S. Army Soldier Show, a troupe of 22 GIs who put on a musical called “Ready and Resilient” — a fitting theme for Fiesta 2013.

“We didn't have the carnival, we weren't going to have the fireworks, we weren't going to have a large extravaganza of food and drink, but it was all about being together,” said Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV, commander of U.S. Army North.

The Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines will contribute to Fiesta celebrations throughout the week, despite the spending cutbacks imposed on federal activities thanks to sequestration.

Larry Benson Sr., Rey Feo LXV, mingled with a crowd that drifted toward Caldwell, Gen. Edward Rice Jr., head of the Air Force's training command, and many other troops .

“To tell you we've noticed it, not really, except for a couple of things, obviously, the fireworks and the flyovers at Randolph,” Benson, 67, of Shavano Park said.

Joint Base San Antonio, which oversees Fort Sam and two other installations here, opted to scratch the fireworks show and carnival because of overtime costs for civil service workers.

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Purple hearts awarded to three

When a powerful roadside bomb blew Spc. Marcus Carr's armored vehicle into the air as if it were a toy, people had reason to wonder if he'd survive the blast, let alone walk again.

He suffered a concussion, a traumatic brain injury, two broken legs, a lost spleen and a badly damaged pancreas, but that wasn't all.

There was a fractured pelvis, other broken bones, a severed nerve in his wrist and a ruptured artery behind his jaw that caused a stroke.

On Monday, he stood with two other soldiers as Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the Army's vice chief of staff, pinned the Purple Heart on them. While it was a big deal that the service's No. 2 commander would honor them, Carr, 28, of Roy, Utah, conceded he'd have been happy to receive the medal in his room at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort San Houston, where he has spent the past 18 months.

“The best fortune I could possibly have is being here,” Carr said. “How the heck I did survive they have no idea, but I'm still here, I'm still alive, I'm still kicking.”

Soft-spoken, he calls himself humble. Close calls often have that effect on people, and Carr is far from done with his ordeal. Rods now do the work of bones crushed in the July 16, 2011, blast. Parts of his body were blown away. TBI has complicated once-simple tasks like remembering the names of old friends.

A thin black metal wristband ensures he won't forget one buddy, Cpl. Raphael Rodrigues Arruda, who was killed in the explosion. A native of Brazil, he was 21.

“In the very beginning, I was pretty much trapped in my own mind,” Carr explained. “It was really hard to talk to people. ... So I pretty much would be giving like one-word answers to a few sentences here and there. Now that's gotten a lot better.”

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West Nile case confirmed in San Antonio

A San Antonio man infected with West Nile virus was hospitalized at San Antonio Military Medical Center, military officials said Wednesday, adding they also had found the mosquitoes carrying the virus in water sources at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston.

The patient, described only as an older man, was in stable condition late Wednesday at SAMMC, but the military is also treating a second, suspected case as an outpatient, this one a woman, said spokesman Dewey Mitchell.

“I think he is improving,” Mitchell said, of the confirmed case. “I don't know if he is totally out of the woods.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services recently issued a statewide alert, warning of a spike in West Nile cases – particularly in North Texas. Statewide, 158 people have been infected by the mosquito-borne virus, and five have died. About two-thirds of the cases were in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and included two deaths.

It was unclear if civilian health officials were looking into any other potential cases. Officials with the Metropolitan Health District were unavailable for comment late Wednesday. The state health department listed only one case in Bexar County.

People get West Nile infections from mosquitoes, which in turn pick up the virus after feeding on birds and mammals. While the vast majority of cases are mild and clear on their own, West Nile can be serious and even fatal if it invades the nervous system.

Symptoms can range from fever, headache, body ache, nausea and drowsiness in the mild form, to stiff neck, visual problems, body tremors, mental confusion, memory loss and seizures in the serious form.

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