Serial S02 - Ep. 3: Escaping
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He look at us, and then he jump behind our bike. We thought he's drunk.

Er, they will kill you just for the amusement of .

being a quickly became very apparent to us .

that the taliban knew this. He is in pakistan.

From this american life and wb easy chicago, it's cereal. One story told week by week. I'm Sarah ic.

Red, after bob g. Golfer swat missing from his outpost in afghanistan, word came down that the heros wanted someone from both baloo second poo on back foot company to record a message to them that they play on local radio. They wanted IT to be a voiced, but would recognize, so they chose a guy bow with friends with a guy from lousianner.

He has a very thick lousianner accent.

So so basically .

he he went up there and they did, I guess they didn't like IT.

So they came down and they got me. That's josh quarter, originally from pensylvania. He didn't want to make a message to bow. He says he felt a little disloyal to his tune, calling out to the guy who was causing them such term oil.

the the comic company. They brought me up there. Two officers brought me up there, and y've put a piece of paper in front of me, which is a script, and said, read this.

What was scraped? IT was like?

IT was. IT was kind of cheesy tool cable. This is josh.

We really miss you. You know, we just want you to come back. We hope you're safe. We hope everything going OK. You know, so come back.

I can kick up thinking later on that my mike, for the entire five years, maybe they playing the same thing. I was like, wonder how long my voice has been going on in tax stand and inst stand. TEllen, bow to come home.

Safe to say both never heard the message. Also safe to say bow was trying really hard to come home. His first year in captivity starts within escape and ends within escape, like shady book ends to a terrible year.

In between the escapes both was learning necessary, twisted lessons of survival. Had a smile when you're in agony that if you ask for something such as water, you're likely to get less of IT or less of something else such as food. If you're severely dehydrated, you can't really drink your own urine because IT turns into a sauli Browns sludge.

That filth instinct are your best weapons. The more disgusting you are, the less your capture want to come near you, which means you can scroll things away in your bed clothes, the smaller and meeker you can make yourself, the more likely the taliban are to let you alone. And as painful as IT is to be forgotten. Ultimately.

that's what you want give. you. Literally not even an animal picture of someone taking them. Turn IT into the closet, showing the door. And just .

begin about IT, right?

I was basically how they treat me, that those, the majority of the time, first year, when they were in that house, molson mula sung, a drawn.

was a commander in charge of keeping boat prisoner up until twenty thirteen when sungei was killed in a drone strike.

Um IT was basically my interaction was a few times a day that they give me food and other boys bring IT. And then maybe you want to try the month one of other guys, one of the men, would come like, check on me. Otherwise, IT was literally just locked in a room. And for guy.

Back in afghanistan, the storm of searching rescue Operations for boat had slowed and then dwindled. They're keep their eyes and ears out, of course, but at a certain point the military had to call IT, while bow was in the worst place he could be if anyone was gone to rescue him, locked in a room across the border in pakistan.

IT seemed like a very strong possibility that he was a taliban sympathiser. I'll put IT that way. And IT seemed that that he, the unrated version is like, what a fucking and apple.

you know? That was mark bol's first casual assessment of bob when he heard the early reports that would walk off. And there was a lot of people's sessile and is understandable based on the information dripping out of the time. An early propaganda video reports that boat converted to islam.

yeah. And then I also remember there was the thing of him like that there had been, there had been some kind of reporting that he was writing run on a horse.

I remember that too. I'm just looking at one from the daily mail. And IT says one of his captors said that he converted to his mom and was going under the name of della and was called very relaxed in our company on close IT has IT has also been claimed that bird dog was so trusted by his knapp ers that they let him sleep without restraint and go bird and rabbit hunting with an old british rifle.

Ah, you know what that reminds me? I heard another one that he played a soccer information like this.

I learned that intelligence analysts refer to IT a strain voltage. By that, they mean it's almost certainly untrue, but still added up to people. Judging from the outside. IT didn't look good, mark said. IT made him feel like maybe bow wasn't someone he should be Carrying about. What is the opposite feeling you usually get when you hear about A P, O, W? But then after both came back and was in germany recovering, mark, talk to someone in the intel world who knew what was going on.

I actually remember somebody telling me, oh yeah, he's he's doing a ton of intel l debriefings. And I was like, oh, that's that's where I thought he was some kind of like taliban guy and they were like, no, no, no, he's like he's not. And this was during the period when all the press reporting was about, you know, how like mentally damaged he was and how he was gradually, you know, react limit to the world.

And everyone was like cautioning, like, you know, don't expect him to pop up on TV anytime and because IT severely traumatized. And then I was also hearing that like privately he was, I mean, maybe all that stuff was true, and i'm sure IT is. But at the same time he was doing a lot of intelligent, brief c so he was like, quite, he's doing in healthy breath that doesn't selling a trader.

When I finally heard bow talk about his time with the taliban, I thought, no, he does not sound like a traitor. As brutal as both first year in captivity was, at least he had plans. His single minded purpose was to get out as best as broke.

Can recall the first escape, if you don't count the one where he ran twenty or thirty feet before I got tackled, have been the first week he was in taliban custody. Taliban fighters, by the way, have confirmed that both did escape once briefly early on, and then again for a longer time, roughly a year later. That first week, both says he was being held at a house of some kind.

Feet were tied with ropes. A chain was wrapped in several loops around his rests. He said he noticed that the previous morning a car had arrived with water, and the students IT did.

Everyone went inside another room for tea. So when the car came again with the water, both says he saw his chance. He managed to manipulate the slack in the chain so that he could slip IT over his neck. Les, he entities feed the wooden doors of the room he was in, released from the outside with a thick wire. So I just stick his hands through the crack to undo IT.

So like sticking my hand out. And I mean, good grief, if anyone was standing outside, like they would have fully seen me fiddling with a damn wired, basically trying to open the door .

but no one does see he runs outside, turns right, and then realizes he's in some kind of shallow valley, or plato u. He sees three houses about two hundred yards off. He starts running.

He's shoeless. He says there's mostly jacket rocks under foot. He springs as vesty can at the first house. He see some kids.

they see me and they are screaming. They run. Third, the house, I see a woman come running out the gate SHE like, sees, mean that like that one foot of life stutter. Stop being and you like, run back into the house.

He keeps going, sees a group of man standing around. The men also see him. So bow runs towards some trees, passes the second house, comes to the third, decides to clip onto the roof.

And I get to the top of the roof. There's like a mud puddle there. And you know, i'm saying low, you i'm basically to slide onto the roof, which happened to be your covered in mud. And I like roll a few times to try and cover myself if eve more mud and I almost worked.

but the men find him up there.

lead him back down. Is that I kind of interesting? I think you this, I get to the ground, right? I guess the old lady from the house, like an old woman from the house, i'd come out at the commotion, you know, all is like Young eyes, or everybody's like talking loud lane, you know, i'm covered in mud. This is all woman comes after me and she's like tries like start like like kind of White the mode off my face and one of Young guys grabs are by the like the arms and like kind of truck are behind them um SHE like yellow that like lead me off start to finish .

the escape last and maybe ten or fifteen minutes both says but the aftermath was severe. They brought you back to where they've been holding him and one's evening came both as they beat them with a rubber hose. At first, IT was one guy who spoke some english. He tool and tall the hose and then wait against both feet. Or if boke covered his feet with his hands, he had work his hands.

He doesn't know exactly how long that lasted, but IT was a long while, he says the next morning, a whole group of man came in with a guy who seem to be an elder, and they all took turns hitting go with the hose until the older man called them off and took his own turn. And then that evening, both thinks that was evening, is not sure. He says he was blind folded this whole time. They moved them.

They moved into a new place because pretty sure there they go. He saw where we were or someone might. And then in a new place, how are you? In prison? Or how did they continue you? In a new place, they put me on a afgan bed and change my feet to the end of the bed and shame my hands to the top of the bed, to those basically spreading al on the bed. And why infolded? And that's how I spent basically the majority next three months.

Three months, boys chained, spread eagle to a bed and blind folded. He was allowed to get up twice a data, use the toilet. He says that that in a statement, bote was released as part of his legal case.

He said that because of the heat and sweat, his body got sore and raw. Where was in contact with the bed? His eyes burned from the pressure of the blind fold.

He can never wipe the salt from them. He developed open wounds on his ankles and infection, which seemed to spread to his forehead. They could beat the bottoms of his feet and other parts of his body with a copper cable.

Both says there came a day when he tried to walk in his guards so his legs were shaking from weakness. After that, they rearranged one of his arms, secured IT down by his side instead of his head, which allowed him to at least set up. The room had dirt walls in a dirt floor.

Both says every three or four weeks he could shower in washes close by the time six months hit. Both had diary. He would have diary for roughly three and a half years, no toilet paper or regular access to water.

Most of the time, his food was scant and came unpredictably. In the broadest strokes, his captivity consisted of twin tormance isolation and sickness. Or as both principal military debrief err described IT, there were roughly three phases to both captivity. Phase one torture.

face two abuse, face three neglect, the time deprivation, too much lighter, too much darkness and too much randomness. Just wear the way as you just drive your nerves .

into the grounds. Yeah.

you know, the constant worry of, am I gona die a day or something worse gonna happen the day, am I going na get food today or am I onna be able to go to the bathroom without some kind of problem happening or know this constant, say.

the conversations between bow and mark started just a few months after both came back. Both talks a lot about how is num or distant or disconnected, which actually has the benefit of helping him talk about what happened. Still, the details about the worst episodes are sometimes hard to stay and hard for mark to take in .

as as the story is. It's really it's overwhelming. You know I can comprehend IT a little bits and pieces like the isolated stuff as IT goes along these details that you're giving me. Each one of them makes sense, you know and they're kind of not that hard to to imagine because you're good at describing IT. But then when you accumulate them all together and you think about this stretch of time and you think about just day in and day out IT, that's when IT becomes sort of incomprehensibly um dark, you .

know.

It's just a, and I understand why they guys, the seer guys in the psychologists were so surprised that you were a total vegetable.

you know.

cause I think that that that would have been enough to to basically put ninety five percent of people in, turn them into potatoes.

Bow was being held by the hughie's, a group run by very powerful pash tune family allied with the taliban. They're based in north of easton, which is in pakistan's tribal region bordering afghanistan. The hacon I had agreed to hold boat for the taliban and the guy in charge of both physical person was mula sungen.

But both as he only saw sungen maybe half dozen times over the years in all, both as he was kept in maybe eight different locations, different compounds, different rooms made of mud or cement. Both has, especially at the beginning, the taliban questioned him, but he said they weren't what you might Normally think of as an interrogation. The questions were strange and sometimes .

incoherent question bikes, you know, the officer is on their days. How do they get their prostitutes? We know that you guys bring prostitutes on base, and they're trying to find every dirty people.

Think all, you know, you guys, you know, what do you? What kind of alcohol you you know, you want drink? You know, what about drugs? Ask you, is obama gain this with men? And then they asked you about how how good cameras do the drones to have, or they ask you anything.

Thankfully, the guy who did speak english and was asking me like information, like those, their information. He knew everything. And he was interest in what I have to say, because he didn't trust me.

And so you never really asked me anything that was that I couldn't warn that I could answer. At one time, he asked me how many bombs could stay on the bomber. And I had no idea, because, like this huge project .

of perfectly reasonable questions, how do the drones work? And then I kind of crazy talk is IT true. All american women are prostitutes that they sleep with animals IT makes you wonder whether they are just trying to rial bow up, or whether they're understanding of our world is as poultry as our understanding of theirs.

Something either and really quickly. What if you show hesitation telling them something, then they think they're on to something. But if you if they ask you a question, then you just start talking to them like you're talking to a Normal person yeah then they get extremely suspicious because they think, well, he is has no problem telling me this. Then there's something wrong with that information.

So either way, they pretty much assume you you're lying, which is maybe why they didn't really press them too hard on any of this stuff. Herring taliban told us through reporter semon u. Subside that the boat didn't give them any useful intelligence or CoOperation besides both, said the taliban get most of their information, information they consider more trustworthy from afghan interpreters to work with U.

S. forces. Suppose valley wasn't in what he knew.

He was in the sheer fact of him, A U. S. Soldier that belonged them.

So getting information for me wasn't like their main priority, getting videos out of me what they wanted to do.

You might have seen some of these videos on the internet. both. They made probably a dozen of them that were never released, but a small handful were. Both of the taliban spent a lot of time making them their moral boosting. Plus, he says, the taban love to embarrassed the united states.

Anyway, they can, but you can't make too many videos or released too many, because every time you do, you're exposing yourself details about the staging or someone's accent or the production values of the day. Core might give your location away, both has said, sometimes make a number of videos during the same shoot, changing the backdrop or his closer as hair or beard to pretend the videos have been taken at different times in different locations. The guy who made both videos s spoke english, seemed western educated. He is like british accent. He'd come into both room always with the same irritating greeting.

Well, look up. Yeah, that was for some train reason in the guys who can speak early. Get english. I will go there, I think IT what's up like IT, what's up and you'd say, you know and take a video of you and you need to think about what you're going to say through the president obama and you know, they know you, you need to talk about like, you know how terrible only is and you know how badly that you are retreated or how corrupt the politicians are in the 会 看。

And so did you have to work on .

your answers? Like the first time he talked to me, I gave him answers, and he was also satisfied with that. At the moment he turned the camera, I completely forget.

After that, they wrote everything down.

One expect they just treat me as my country's army has treated their muslim prisoners in background, in consumer bae, abba and many other separate prisons and in around the world. But I bear witness. I was continuous between as a human being doing in this video.

both wearing a camouflage jacket, helmet and sunglasses. He looks really weird, he said the sunglasses, so you couldn't see his eyes reading the paper. And also maybe because the taliban think sunglass look cool.

which agreed I had nobody deprived me of my clothes and take pictures of the native. I had her dogs, artie, me. And buying, like country has done in the muslim prisoners in the jails dimension.

When he made that video, both says the bed he was trained to spreading goal was just off to his left. The videos has hit this theme a lot, how well he's being treated compared to how the U. S. Treats taliban prisoners.

How treating you.

he says, how our muji had been .

treating you Better than i've been treated in just as a guest in a regular household in america.

The video is also hit other common taliban talking points, one of which is that the U. S. Government is lying to the american public about how many american soldiers have been killed in afghanistan.

The americans playing, there's not a few hundreds did so far. Oh, this true was more time, I believe, the death toll americans in against and is higher than what the 标注 这 allows the worlds。

The army has moral guidelines for how a soldier is supposed to behave. If here he is captured by the enemy is called the code of conduct, IT says. Among other things, if I am captured, I will continue to resist. By all means available, I will make every effort to escape. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades, and when question besides naming and conceal number quote, I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability.

I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause and quit soldiers I talk to from both batta told me the fact that bow appears in these videos at all, that is answering their questions, repeating their talking points, that right there is an obvious violation of the code of conduct. They said, even if someone has a gun to your head, and by the way, both says there wear guys with guns on these video shoots, you don't participate in the enemy's propaganda campaign. Well, that's actually an interpretation of the code that military officials do not agree with.

That is not the standard the army is asking soldiers to live up to. You are not expected to die. Refusing to make a video in the first and second golf is american.

Po w. Showed up in propaganda videos too, and the military didn't blame them for IT. They understand that as a prisoner, you're gona be compelled to do things you don't want to do.

And also, while the U. S. Military isn't going to encourage you to be in a video, if you're captured, there isn't upside to being filmed. Your government has proof your alive in a military hearing on both case.

Terry's Russell, the guy who debriefed bow, said in these videos, boat did what he had to do and that as the videos go on, you can see him getting Better at resisting, at minimizing the propaganda value. In the very first video, the taliban released me, jalib, two thousand and nine, about three weeks after boat disappeared. Bois, sitting in front of a table with some Green liquid in a big mug.

Mark asp? O what IT was, mom, what mountain do if you want to put those of people off in that country .

and off their should do supply? It's in this video.

that boy explains how he was captured. Captured, was captured outside a mess is go, what were you doing? I was behind the patrol. I was slagging behind the the 说 when I was， this was widely reported back in the us.

That both said he was caught while lagging behind on a patrol. And again, a bunch of the soldiers I talked to mention this that when they heard IT and made them mad because it's such obvious nonsense. Soldiers do not lag behind on patrols in afghanistan, and then just disappear without anyone noticing is not a thing.

So when they heard IT was in the video, some of them saw that as evidence that boat was lying about what happened. Boat was lying. He says, of course he was lying. He says he knew that americans listening would know IT was baloney. That was the point.

That was one way in the video of basically telling people, hey, what i'm saying in this video is the lives prety state. It's pretty reversed and has nothing to do with .

reality in was IT all request .

or staged ah so .

none of that was you you the real you I mean.

would you anything was a desperate me trying to figure out how to stay on edge of not CoOperating with them and yet CoOperating them with them to the point that they don't.

The guy's guarding bow don't speak english, which makes sense. Why would they? But also, that same herrington taliban told us they don't necessarily want someone like bow near anyone who speaks english, because they might say something just inadvertently.

And I could help him with an escape, but even if they couldn't really talk to him both as they interacted with them, they messed with them. They throw things at him or point in A K forty seven at them. Just kidding.

Once they tried to make him smoke a cigarette with a little fires cracker in IT when he handed IT back heeled banging and one of the guards, after that, the guy gave him less food. Boller are not to sleep in the daytime because IT left him open to these guys. They might take any opportunity picture being saved by the taliban with a straight razor, his handcuffs, even then, when he couldn't be more vulnerable, they'd have a .

laugh at his expense. And what they really find hilarious is the guy who has a fear d but he doesn't have a mustees.

Okay, so you know what happened?

What the jobs came in, the sense that you shaved my face in the way that would most to use them.

I see they take .

take videos or take pictures, yet the laugh at yourself, yeah, want to keep things from getting worse. But you basically the reality situation was the bottle the joke with me, and that just was something I had to.

except sami use subside. The afghan reporter interviewed some people who had dealings with bow while he was in captivity, a big shot who came by and talked about on his cell, a guy who cooked for him, a friend of one of the guards, someone from all song's on to rage. What Sammy took away from these interviews was that keeping burger, or was number one stressful?

You have to keep him away from everybody, not truly from Jones. You have to keep you from a band, because is if something happened, but then then you are responsible. They will be, you know, be ten you are arrested by.

So that's why these guards are watching the only U. S. Soldier who's ever been taken prisoner in this war. Other groups might wanna steal him from them.

Sammy said the guards had her talk that some arabs and masks had almost made IT to the house where they were holding bow and that moleson gean had captured and executed some people he felt were being paid by the U. S. For information on bow. So even though it's a prestigious job, is still sucks. Yeah I say is still .

still like mentally lot of pressure and and bored could happen and boring. That's the other thing .

Sammy heard in these interviews how tedious IT was for them, which is probably where the stupid and sometimes citizens jokes come in. These guys are mostly Young men. They're stuck inside a compound or some other prison location while their pills are may be out about enjoying themselves.

you know, having fun, dancing a turn or something. But here you know, you are born. Nobody is allowed to come to visit because of this guy.

We are in trouble, we cannot go around, we cannot go to the city, we cannot make a phone call because there was nothing. Uh, so even even even by the guards, you know they are not really happy. But still, since they were the other, i'm sure the ema gan was promising them a lot of think lot of things that.

yeah, yes.

this is big chicken and you will have more money in everything. They talk to a friend .

who are the guard who told them that to amuse themselves, they think of things to do, to do, or had to get rid of bow. They had a long hypothetic ticals discussion about circumcising him. They talked about selling him, or maybe calling in a phony tips.

The americans that they had a somma in ladon, so they'd be a RAID. They could be done with IT. Another words, there are Young guys shooting the shit following orders.

Both keepers would make him watch execution videos of beheading ings or suicide bombers, both at the very first day they got him. They showed him a video of mujahadeen executing prisoners. He talks to mark a lot about these videos, in part because he's still affected by them.

Certain details lodged in his head. In one, a man is about to be beheaded, looks terrified, his silent, and a rooster is growing for both. The videos is riviere sly, disturbing on their face. But they were also a grizly warning that this could happen him at any time.

Every group I went to, they all have their own videos to show me.

And where they showing IT you like this is that we've done, or just off that other people we know i've done.

the majority of them was, this is what other people have done. A few of them have been. This is what are our people have done. And there is one guy who was, I would say, literally, you basically out of his mind, in fact, to the point where the other taliban called him crazy taliban. 我。

they is .

crazy. They, they, you can see, have been in background. And so they call him crazy talent. And he, he, would you tell me that he killed? He was killed like one time on one of his shifts. He told me to 啊 he he decapitated two guys and a few months later he came back and he told me that he has .

done another oh， while he was in the intern when while he hadn't seen you yeah well.

And the people who was killing me called them jesus. And those of the guys who are basically their afghans to betray their brothers for american.

During all this time, bow is scheming and playing, gathering information that he hopes will get him out and that he can deliver back to the U. S. Which, by the way, he does terms.

Russell at the military hearing said he and other debriefs, intelligencer, briefers, seer psychologists, FBI agents, all found both eager to download whatever intel he could and quote, remarked on the quality of information sergeant burdell was providing, and quote also, they praised his recall. Both said he was trying all the time to store in his memory mental pictures of every detail he could for this mission. He pretty much starts from zero when he's chained down in buying, folded.

When he can't see, he listens, tries to design the daily patterns of the people who kept them when they slept, when they ate, how their families work, who's related to whom he didn't know that would be useful to him, or do someone else back home. But in case, as he gets moved around from house to house and allowed marginally more freedom to see and to stand, he splines up new bit of information. He ends up staying a while at a house on my guy he thinks was named today.

By this time, bow was so filthy, he smelled so bad, he said. The Young women and little boys resented having to deal with them. They might spell his food on purpose once a boy beat him over the head with his own chain as best as spoke to tell IT was because he'd been having both started to suss out information.

There is one kid who came in and he was really to show me this hat that he had and he was given to by his brother. It's actually a blue baseball cap.

Ah, okay. And he .

showed to me. And on the baseball cap is the name of the school. And in the quarters, IT said the name of the town and in the other side is said north with their .

span all in english, yeah, all english .

or so like somebody .

had given IT to them like some like ng r or somebody that was .

that was their school uniform.

So maybe that was the name of the place he was in. North was never stand now he just tried to figure out exactly where the north was. Zero stand was everywhere he was held, he said, except from one place in the mountains, he was pretty sure he wasn't too far from when he assumed was an american base.

He could hear artillery. He could see helicopters losing altitude to land. He could hear the scream of plane engines. In fact, what he was hearing was almost certainly a pakistani base. But bow couldn't know that the best he could figure he was still in afghanistan very near the border.

Bow had no special training and had to survive. Any of this had to deal with abuse, had to gather into, had to resist, while making IT look like you're CoOperating. As an army private, he'd addwas called a level sea training, the most basic level of survival, evasion, resistance in escape training, and what IT consisted of at the time of both deployment, according to both senior debris.

Or was, quote, here's the quote, conduct unquote. So he's just puzzling IT out as he goes, trying things and then trying them again. Day's house is a sort of murder, hurt.

Both attempts to dig himself out something like five times to get rid of the dirt he lose from the wall. He'd mix IT with his own urine or fees, and then smear IT back on the wall. The apples and rocks were harder to dispose of.

At the same house there was a dog, a pretty aggressive dog, that the little boys and men especially were scared of. Both of the women sometimes gave IT leftovers, so is nicer to them. One knew if he tried to escape, he couldn't have the dog freaking out in barking.

So he started sneaking a bit of food out to IT when he was LED to the a train which was right near where the dog slept. In that way, bow made peace with the dog who eventually began sweeping in the room where bow was, which is capture thought was totally weird. Incidently, someone who analyzed in tel in bose case told me one of the rumors they heard along the way was that bow had a puppy, possibly a german shepard puppy, which the analysts took to be silliness.

But maybe this sometimes vicious guard dog was the so called puppy. Over the months, well managed together small items, which he turned out to tools. And by the end of that first year, taken together, theyd become his escape cat.

He had a length of PVC tube, maybe eight inches long. He'd been able to keep with them since the very first house in one of the rooms, he shopped into the wall and peered down IT, so his iron wouldn't just be in the room. The pipe will reappear later as part of a crossbar.

He found a nail in a mud wall. He could make holes with a scrape away, dirt with the cleanness, fingernails with IT. And when the time came, he'd spent weeks rubbing the head of bit on iraq until IT was just the right shape to get the old timmy shackles of his rests.

He stored the nail in the soul of the shoe, but probably the biggest score was the key. The men and boys had come into his room. One of the boys was holding a venture keys on a string, and he dropped them.

And when he did, one of the keys got away. IT fell, writing near the matter where both slept, so both slide underneath the, he said nobody seemed to notice IT was missing. IT wasn't the key to the padlock e. He needed to open but both says the locks where these cheaply made chinese locks and I wiggling the key just so he could hit the sweet spot and pop them open.

And with that one key, and using that technique, IT allowed me to open, I think, the three padlock that they're using, the hold by, the change around my feet and the change that work, change to to eat up bit more, are aware IT was that they're chained in. So over the year, over the month, I was able, able to keep this key.

Boo had tried many mini escapes. He gotten as far as a courtroom ard up to a wall. But they were four years.

Really his biggest, best chance came when he was at a remote place in the mountains. This was the farthest he ever was from a populated area. Basically, a taliban prison book calls at the mountain fortress because .

IT was really is literally IT looked like a fortuity. But I had, like this really told adult time being that was like a look out how or something. And I know in all because the wood that was used to make, like the the rafters and the the tos and the stairs, everything was just this really old with. And like IT was actually hand chisels, he could see that your Marks.

In the mountain fortress, bow was kept in a second story room, which was padlocked, but there was a window without bars on IT. This place was so old, and he seemed so pathetic by that point, he says his guards weren't taking extra precautions. Both had the nail, the key, the PVC pipe, was a wooden stake that was in the room. He had an empty leader, bottle of mountain dew, a hat, blanket, his sandals. He went for IT.

And so in the middle, the night that basically I put everything together, I practice all the night before counting the hours down to the point where I everything was silence. I knew everyone was a sleep for the most far. And I practice and before putting, like with no site, this all feeling, putting everything either putting the time and putting together, getting the time in my hand, time up the water boil that I had, so that only once had all that makeup rope about the window. The rope was made .

from the two chains he had now liberated, each about six feet long, he says, plus betting, IT ended up being quite a bit longer than he needed. The drop to the ground was only about fifteen feet, but I didn't .

know that I used the PVC bar and PVC pipe and stake as the cross bar race and window and not allow me to mine. Now there's .

a reason maybe you haven't heard other american P O W escape stories. It's because there hasn't been a successful once since the vietnam more again the code of conduct as you're supposed to attempt IT. But the army understands, especially since fianna, that the odds are usually and overwhelmingly .

against .

you if europe po w and you assess the situation. And it's highly unlikely I can make IT out that window without being shot. It's highly unlikely that even if I do make IT out, i'll be able to blend in with the local population.

And it's highly likely that if the enemy finds me, they will torture or kill me. So no, i'm not gonna try to go out that window. That is right and fine. No one will falt you for IT to me, more than anything, this moment in the mountain fortress puts all the talk about both being a sympathiser to rest, but did not sympathy with the talian. He loved the talian so much, so that even when he's sick, when he doesn't have any food, when he's already been punished for escaping the first time, he knows what that's like. And still he goes out the window.

At the bottom, he makes a bag out of his blanket, puts his water bottle in IT sling, IT over his shoulder and starts walking both as apart from being rescued, IT was maybe the best moment of his five years.

A weight lifted off on my back. yeah. And suddenly my sickness, suddenly all the pain just didn't matter anymore and just walking.

It's high desert terrain called at night, hot in the day, rocky. There are bushes and trees that both have looked like Joshua trees and something pinny not a lot of cover. But his immediate objective is not to hide, though we will have to do a lot of high day, obviously.

But right now, he's trying to get as far away as he can from the fortress. He wants to spread the search party as thinly as possible. He has what he hopes is south east intending to go into pakistan.

He figures he's got a Better shot and encountering someone non hostile to him in pakistan. But the train is so difficult he's in these short, steep, mazy mountains. You get over one, there's immediately another one, and they're all about the same height. So it's not like you can reach a peak and get your bearings, see the twinkle of a friendly fab in the distance he climbs in the sands, sometimes scooting on his but others, while he's listening for a water to replenish his water bottle, he reaches a valley and it's populated. He keeps having to bear this way, or that skirt of fence, or house, or shepherds tent.

So stupidly trying and put distance between me and and ten, I wasn't taking my time and taking IT slow and easy. And I step off a Cliff. And I don't know how long I don't know how big of a drop that was, but IT was a big enough drop for me to think on the way down. I was like the initial drop was like a good grief, but then I kept falling to the point where I got over the surprise that I was falling and I started thinking, you're got to be kidding me and cannot be this .

far down bolds on a dry river bed on his left side, he said the word ouf actually came out of his mouth, just like in a cartoon loud enough so that some dog .

started barking their heads off. About thirty, forty feet away from where I had fAllen, there was a creek. So I had, so I wanted to fill in my water bottle, because that's what I was looking for.

So I drink as much water. And like, when I pull the water bottles out, that isn't when I realized that I could actually move my fingers to the left of my left. And so I couldn't get that. That top of that was my first, first. Think like that, you know, what I did in my left side was a lot worse than what I was feeling at the time.

You're a generally must have just been pumping so hard this whole time.

Reason why I didn't feel what I end up feeling about maybe fifteen minutes later.

he's done something terrible to his left leg and his left ARM and the pain of that starts to wash over him and then just stay. It's getting later. It's gona be light soon.

So bow uses the small length of bar that had been used to hold his feet together. And he uses IT to claw the earth at the base of a trade to make a whole. It's multi and then just rocks underneath, but it's good enough.

He piles the dirt around the hole to make a burn, and then stick branches into the firm. So IT blends into the landscape Better. Then he gets into the whole and pulses blanket over himself.

And then I take a bunch of the piedad from the tree and spring all over the blanket, and I get there and wait me. By that time, the sun was already started to come up over the rising.

So that was the first night of freedom in all both. As this escape lasted about nine days, in the interviews with sami and in other media reports, the taliban admit this escape happened, though their versions vary in terms of how IT happened and how long IT lasted. Generally, they said, two to three days, both debriefs settled on eight point five days.

Once morning hits, both has to stay put in the whole, you can't move around in the day and where he is, it's populated and its rural, so people walk everywhere. There are footpath Chris crossing all over the place over the coming week while he's hiding, and holes or trenches during the day. Both says there were so many close calls, sheep that came close and spooked women out gathering something rather from the bushes.

Men, he could tell there were men with guns. He could hear the crack of the metal. There was a scare with a flash late a time when he heard the familiar beaming of those motorola type oki talkies the taliban use, a time when little girls were ordered off the road and up the hill where he was hiding.

Girl, maybe may be three year or four, a tiny little thing. They come walking along and apparently they're looking for .

flowers or something. Yeah.

finally, theyd wear off the road. They come like almost directly towards me. They pass right by his feet.

keep going. They're talking to each other, immerse in whatever they doing, and then they come back down the hill. And both, as they passed bright by his head, tiny of oblivious girls.

Boat can't walk properly because his left side is hurt in so badly. So he's crawling along on a combination of elbows and knees or on his, but is not going well on top of everything. He really has no idea where he's going.

He's completely lost. He'd learned the lecture al navigation as a kid, but now we can't recall how the big deeper relates to the north star. The water he drinking is fed like IT seen to too many sheep. His eating grass student thing was.

there was enough grass in that country. Make a different food like anything. When I did, maybe they were now, again at the olympic, like twenty year, very little stranger grass and .

eat that it's as a boat shrinking, getting smaller and more helpless, more primitive. His shit is completely Green and he's stuck in a whole all day is down to nothing, no resources, and right above him. Some of the highest tech equipment in the world for seeing in finding drones, american drones guided by american eyes and bow.

And these drone pilots, they can't reach each other. Go says. He remembers one night being on top of a mountain.

the sky I remember, and I feel like six drones, they moving across the sky. And this really is not a best feeling. Your soul grows and yet things they're so stack against you that is just, you know, it's impossible, but you know, you can do anything but just keep gone.

Sometimes you think about what you do if a friendly convoy or patrol came by, how we would safely get their attention. We ran out them in his affghan clothes. They might think he was a suicide bomb.

So I figured he take all his close off because of tall, skinny, naked White guy coming out you something to pause over. Perhaps if anyone had come across bone, they're probably have taken in the following. He's in pain on his left side.

He's engage red to stress. He's starving. He's scared in his lost.

Did you ever think that during the court escape that may be you made a mistake that the you know being out that escaping with maybe more treasurer than just staying put?

No, I knew he was like before I escaped, I knew was gonna be more there is gonna be more immediate risk.

yeah. In order .

to get myself out, the window had to basically come the terms of the faxes. This was very much like a suicide mission, you know, like one way out. And I looking for a middle and haste as as far as being saved, as far as finding some safe point.

But I was like, okay, I die either from exposure out there or being shot by escape. It's Better than having my head cut off because I saw enough of those movies to, or videos I saw enough of those to. No, what what that would be like.

Toward the end, bow was too debilitated to cover much ground. His hunger pains were gone, but he was backing out when he stood up getting tunnel vision. He didn't exactly stop caring about getting caught, more like he stopped having the energy to be afraid. He remembers one of the last nights watching the sun go down, and his only thought was that I was beautiful.

On the last day, both says he had passed out on top of a mountain, and when he came to, he started trying to make some sort of brace out of sticks for his left knee. And he heard voices and rustling bushes. And below him, he saw the search party coming up the mountain.

He was caught because of the drones. The men wanted to get him off the mountain as quickly as they could. They took him back to the prison.

One of the older guys, both of things he might have been a relative of Masoni, attacked them, tried to put his hair out, beard, which boys he succeeded in doing. But both says he was so out of IT he didn't really feel that he wasn't beaten more than that. He says, maybe because they knew looking at him, he might not survive a beating.

They threw bow in a room, let him sleep the next morning. They clean them up, and they took him to a meeting with mulsanne. This principal message to bow was, if he tried to escape again.

we'll just kill you. I mean, did you apologize to them?

No, I hope I never. I never .

apologize for trying to escape.

Yeah.

I probably .

would have. No, I think that escape was in the last time myself w stars, until the night special forces picked me up, you know.

without the long time, about four years, in fact. And while he's waiting, so many people would be trying to get bow away from sung gan, all these huge military and diplomatic forces about to kick in, just as the united states is realizing you need to get out of this war. And then things get really interesting next time on cereal.

Serials produced by Julie snyder dan activists in me in partnership with markle meghan ellison hugo lindon just go whispered page one in anointed pictures hour glasses are editorial advisor when the danger fields are digital editor researched by Kevin garnett fact checking by Michelle copy editing by oneself oni our music is composed by nick thorburn, fits mires and mark phillips the show was mixed by cable in ski Christian Taylors are community editor other serial staff seat Emily condon, at least burger son and canberra henderson special thanks this week to brake Morrison studio rodrigo, Chris rodan and Andrew coots our website is serial podcast dot work.

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Serious protection of this american life. And W B E. Chicago coming up on the next episode of cereal. Was IT worse than iraq that that deployment? I mean.

I was, yeah, I was the worst year my life. IT was horrible. Yeah.

your Operations order had something to due the bull bert doll. Then people were gonna to give IT the step of approvals. They go ahead, smash, smashed down some doors, ask some questions.

I have some guilt, like maybe there is something I could do, but then what if? I don't know exactly why boo was sort of treated the way he was treated, but it's certainly plausible to me that the reason he was treated so horribly was because I was treated so well.