An Israeli (Retired) Soldier’s Thoughts on War and Sgt. Bergdahl
David Langerman

For three weeks during the Yom Kippur War I lived in the same clothes. There was no distinction between the dirty smelly uniform and my body. Memories of the war in the desert were invoked this week, five days after my surgery, when I finished reading The Yellow Birds, Kevin Power’s novel that draws on his experience in Iraq.

And I felt connected and in awe. I just couldn’t grasp how American soldiers survived Iraq or Afghanistan. For me the war was horrific, but I knew why I was there, it was just a few kilometers from home. I knew that I would go back home and be in the safety and love of family and friends and a job that waited for me. I was then a reserve soldier in the Armored Brigade that was the first to cross the Suez Canal.

Reading Power’s book I found it gripping and painful: I could smell the odors, the stench that he described, could identify with the feelings, yet I just could not imagine how an American soldier in that desert in Iraq survived, not a few weeks, but two years in a constant unrelenting battlefield. The novel powerfully describes the emotional deterioration of soldiers. And those who should know what is going on, the military leadership is ignorant or just ignoring the soldiers’ increased anguish. The most hardened man in the platoon (the sergeant) committed suicide, and the rest continued to decline. Some like the narrator found themselves in prison and even after, remained imprisoned in the horror of the experience.

The soldier’s narration and fate in The Yellow Birds turned into real headlines in the news. Just when I finished reading the book, I heard how Americans in Congress and some in the media criticized President Obama for freeing Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, and I have to ask them what they know about war. How much time have they spent under the harsh conditions of Sgt. Bergdahl that they feel so free to judge him? They have no idea what war is like. And I was lucky. I survived, I was alive, and after the Yom Kippur war I could back to my life.

It is wrong to use the dry legal system to judge a soldier who lost his mind without taking into account the fact that the soldier lost his mind as a result of serving in a war. It seems to me that the responsibility for the consequences that wars have for soldiers rests squarely and solely with the politicians/governments that send them to battle. I think of the picture of General Patton hitting a shell-shocked soldier, which demonstrates a heartless and cruel obtuseness, a kind of ignorance that, in 2014, is still embraced by many. The political leadership has to take responsibility for the inhuman and inhumane task

that it gives soldiers in all wars.

When I finished reading The Yellow Birds I thought I wanted one more fight: Against all wars.

Translated from the Hebrew by Ayala Emmett