Strange twist in life of Marine 1st Sgt. Travis Twiggs

May 14, 2008
The War Within Takes Down Another Victim
How quickly, it would seem, one can go from badass to bad apple. USMC Staff Sergeant Travis N. Twiggs, please, say it ain't so. I so want to believe this is a case of mistaken identity, or that somehow out there might be several Travis Twiggs, roaming America, with their country music star-sounding names. But at this particular moment, that just seems a tad unlikely.

Some background. On January 8, 2008, and then again on April 23, 2008, we wrote about Travis Twiggs on this blog. See entries here and here. Twiggs is/was a USMC 1st sergeant or staff sergeant, from the 2nd battalion, 6th regiment, company G, who had served four(!) tours in Iraq, including most recently in Fallujah. That's a photo of him on the left, just a month or so ago, touring a plant in North Carolina, and thanking them for sending his guys specialized socks in Iraq (Thor-Lo). I've cropped the photo but he's talking with a seamstress at the plant, and he presented the company with a flag that was flown in Iraq for their support. All good so far.
His story initially came to my attention because Washington Post columnist and well-known military author Tom Ricks wrote about Twiggs briefly in January.
Twiggs has been forthcoming about his battle with PTSD, and has told his story compellingly, most recently in the Marine Corps Gazette, in January of this year, in an article entitled, "PTSD: The War Within. A Marine writes about his PTSD experience." I wanted to secure Twiggs' permission to retell his story in full on this blog, in his words, but although he attached his email address to the article, and other email addresses have surfaced, no reply was forthcoming to my email requests. Nor did the Marine Corps Gazette respond. This, and some things he said in his article, both gave me pause, and made me wonder -- was his story really such a resounding success after all?
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