4th tour in Iraq with PTSD

On his fourth tour downrange, soldier would like to see system tweaked
By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, December 16, 2007

After his third deployment, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Tingle started to think maybe he had done his bit for the global war on terror.

He had bivouacked in Afghanistan. “We lived like animals pretty much,” he said.

He had invaded Iraq. “We never stopped rolling,” said Tingle, a mechanic. “Just not sleeping for a year, always having eyes in the back of your head.”

He had spent thousands of hours on convoys, fixed who-knows-how-many broken vehicles and, although not part of his job description, worked a nightmarish job with mortuary affairs. “Part of my life I’ll never talk about,” he said.

His grandfather died during Tingle’s first Iraq tour — he heard the news three weeks later. His wife’s parents both died on another. “They let me go on leave for 10 days,” he said. “I didn’t make it to the funeral, of course, because it took me three days to get home.”

He has been married 10 years, but has spent nearly half that time thousands of miles from his wife, whose patience with him — his absence, followed by a rocky readjustment, followed by his absence — he treasures. Most of their friends have divorced, he said, but his wife has stood by him.

“She’s a good woman,” he said.

So when his request was denied to leave Fort Campbell, Ky., after a third combat tour and go to Fort Bliss, Texas — an area near relatives and to a unit that wasn’t deploying — and he instead got orders to go to Fort Riley, Kan., Tingle protested.

“I said, ‘You all know Riley’s deploying, right?’

“They said, ‘You’re going to Third Brigade. They’re not deploying for two years.’

“So I get there, they put me in First Brigade, and they were going out the door.”

Tingle is now on his fourth combat tour, based this time at Camp Taji. None of his tours have been a cakewalk, he said, and he’s been treated in the past for post traumatic stress disorder.
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How long are we going to keep doing this to them?