The Last Tour

By William Finnegan
Issue: Sept 29

The suicide rate among veterans is the highest it has been since 1980, the year the government started keeping track. In this article, Finnegan tells the story of Louisianan Travis Twiggs, a combat veteran who suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and killed himself just weeks after telling President Bush: "Sir, I’ve served over there many times — and I would serve for you anytime."

Finnegan writes of Twiggs' extreme affection for the commander in chief.

"Rather than simply shake the President’s hand, Twiggs bear-hugged him."

After this meeting with the president, Travis, joined by down-and-out brother Will, visited some relatives and drove to the Grand Canyon. They tried to drive off a cliff, but the car got stuck, they lived, and so backpacked through the desert - "a landscape suited to an apocalyptic frame of mind." Next was the carjacking.

“I’ve made a lot of wanted posters,” Ken Phillips, National Park Service ranger, said. “But this was the first time I had to crop out the President.”

Two days later Travis shot his brother, then himself. P.T.S.D. sufferers are not, at the present time, eligible for a Purple Heart.

Travis' wife Kellee was constantly trying to calm and distract her husband, especially at bedtime when he would act as though he were on duty.

"I’d call his name, get him back to bed, and the only way I could get him to sleep was to put him in a bear hug and rock him," she said.