Marine carried war home inside of him, Part Two of Travis Twiggs

Marine carried war home inside of him
by Ron Thibodeaux, The Times-Picayune
Saturday June 07, 2008, 9:28 PM
Second of a two-part series

There it was, the ultimate canvas for God's paintbrush: the Grand Canyon, natural wonder of the world, America's candy-striped geological masterpiece. Spruce and firs and Ponderosa pines, majestic in their silence, framed the panorama beneath an immense open sky.


Suddenly, a deep blue Toyota Corolla with a Virginia license plate came out of nowhere, lurching toward the precipice, spraying gravel, shattering the calm. In an instant, its front wheels dipped off the edge and the car began to hurtle toward eternity.

And then, just as fast, it jolted to a stop -- snagged on the branches of a tree growing from below the drop-off.

It wasn't going any farther, and it couldn't go back.

The two men inside were jostled but essentially unharmed. After some momentary confusion, they managed to grab their backpacks, clamber out and start up toward the park road.

Back on solid ground, perhaps they stopped for a moment to ponder the route that had brought them to this point: one, a battle-hardened Marine, haunted by the ghosts of war; the other, his older brother, attuned to his suffering and willing to do anything in his power to ease his brother's pain.

In that moment, they didn't know where they were going or what they would do, but one thing was certain -- they couldn't go back.

A Marine's Marine

For Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, commitment to the Marine Corps ideal and responsibility for the fighting men who served with him were obligations he relished. From duty at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to jungle warfare training in Okinawa, Japan, to combat conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was a Marine's Marine: leading from the front, taking care of his own, becoming the kind of role model that America's military wants in its noncommissioned officers.

But when he returned from Iraq, Sgt. Twiggs' war was just beginning. More than most, he struggled to adjust to stateside duty away from the battle. The camaraderie-under-fire that he left behind in Iraq was a siren song that threatened to destroy his ability to function as a Marine, as a husband and a father, as a person.
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