PDA

View Full Version : Marine carried war home inside of him



thedrifter
06-08-08, 08:48 AM
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.

The anxious behavior, the surliness, the need for the adrenaline rush that he could get only in the kill zone, the dependence on alcohol to dull the other symptoms -- the evidence was unmistakable. As he lived and breathed, Sgt. Twiggs was a poster child for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Back in Iraq in the fall of 2005, things went from bad to worse when two Marines in his unit were killed. As time passed, the guilt the sergeant felt over the loss of his platoon members exacerbated the other problems borne from his battlefield experience.

From the time he returned from that deployment two years ago, his life became a whirlwind of treatment programs interspersed with periods of non-combat duty, anchored by loving family members, some who understood what he was going through, others who had no reason to suspect anything was amiss.

In the midst of his latest treatment at Bethesda Naval Hospital's inpatient psychiatric unit, he contrived early last month to drive to Louisiana to see his dying grandmother. While back home, it was only natural that he would reconnect with his oldest and dearest friend, his big brother, Will.

Protective brother

They were three amigos, those boys, and from the outset, Willard Twiggs was protective of little brothers Travis, known as Te-Beaux, and Ryan.

Willard "was always so well-spoken, and they were still small," recalled their stepmother, Nancy Twiggs. "He was going to watch out for them and be the pack leader, the decision-maker."

They lived in Ama, one of those long, narrow River Road communities so common to both sides of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It was rural, wooded country -- the right place for little boys to grow up. A sister, Kimberly, came along a few years later, and they brought her into the fold, teaching her all the important stuff they knew, such as how to play football and wrestle.

Willard was studious, polite, an avid sports fan and a bright, happy kid. He made the district honor band as a French horn player, and he was editor of the Pow Wow, the Luling Elementary School newspaper.

And then, when he was 11 years old, he cast a spell over New Orleans.

As New Orleans' first-ever contestant in the National Spelling Bee, Willard became a local celebrity. He won the metropolitan spelling bee in April 1981, besting other middle school spellers from New Orleans and suburban parishes, and earned an expense-paid trip to the national event. The winning word that punched his ticket to Washington was "ineluctable," which means not to be avoided, changed or resisted.

As in, Willard's devotion to his brothers was ineluctable.

At the National Spelling Bee about a month later, he lasted until the fourth round, finishing 71st among 120 contestants.

Recovery work

Willard became Will at some point during his time at Hahnville High School. After graduation, he did a stint in the Navy, then entered the maritime industry, working for companies that deal with the international shipping at the port of New Orleans.

As an adult, living alternately in New Orleans and Metairie, Will smoked too much and drank enough to be stopped for driving while intoxicated three times between 1992 and 2003. Otherwise, though, he stayed out of trouble, and he maintained the happy-go-lucky personality of his childhood, quick with a smile, eager to make other people laugh.

After evacuating to Houston with his girlfriend for Hurricane Katrina, he returned to New Orleans, but not to the shipping business. He found work instead in recovery projects, one house or landscape at a time, starting with his aunt's flooded home in Kenner.

"After the storm, Will came over and totally took over," his stepmother, Nancy Twiggs, said. "Everything was destroyed. He took down all the walls, just out of the goodness of his heart for his aunt. He was just devastated that that had happened to her."

Douglas Twiggs called his oldest son "a good heart."

"I think Will wanted to be a carpenter," he said. "My daddy was a carpenter and a cabinetmaker. Will always liked that kind of stuff, too."

All this time, Travis was wrapped up with his own intense career in the Marine Corps, and he and his wife, Kellee, had two daughters. He and Will didn't see each other as much as they once did, but they stayed in touch and remained close, according to family members.

"For Te-Beaux, even with all his training, Will still seemed to be the big brother," their father said.

'They didn't have any plan'

It's unclear how Travis left Bethesda in early May. He had talked his way out of a hospital treatment program at least once before; this time, he might have gotten a weekend pass. However he got out, by the time he was listed as AWOL, he was well on his way to Louisiana.

On the night of May 6, he and Will dropped in unannounced at their parents' home in Ama, then drove to Covington to see their ailing grandmother. The boys never said anything about a pending road trip.

"They didn't have a plan," their stepmother said. "I even asked them, 'What's your plans?' They didn't have any plan."

Travis checked in with his dad by phone two nights later, again from Covington. From that moment forward, there are lots of questions, and very few answers.

One day, the guys were hanging out together around New Orleans. The next thing anyone knows, they were wanted by police in Arizona -- for carjacking a vehicle at the Grand Canyon.

Described as armed, violent

Around 3:15 p.m. on Monday, May 12, two men were seen by several tourists walking away from an accident where a car had driven off the edge of the Twin Overlooks site at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, National Park Service police at the canyon reported.

The car, with a Virginia license place, was found lodged in a treetop, just off the edge of the overlook.

Four hours later, another tourist reported that two men had carjacked his vehicle from a nearby South Rim location. The carjackers matched the general description of the two men in the earlier incident.

The suspects, described as armed and having violent criminal histories, were identified as Travis and Willard Twiggs. Police launched an extensive search. Travis' history of post-traumatic stress disorder was noted by authorities, who went on to speculate that the car-over-the-cliff maneuver was a suicide attempt.

To relatives a time zone away, none of this made any sense. Violent criminal behavior was not in their nature. What were they doing at the Grand Canyon anyway? And suicide? No way.

Days later, a law enforcement officer would tell their father that the incident appeared to have been "a desperation carjacking," not a crime of opportunity.

"Even when we first heard that the authorities there thought this was an attempted suicide, we were like, 'Absolutely not,'ยค" Nancy Twiggs said. "If they had wanted to commit suicide, why do you go to the Grand Canyon? We feel like they fell asleep, just dozed off at the wheel. But we have no idea.

"I don't know what they talked about between New Orleans and the Grand Canyon. That's where all of the facts just fade away. I just figure that once Travis was out of Bethesda, I know he was probably overmedicated for a really long time, but once he was away from Bethesda he was probably not on any of his medicines."

Two shots

The brothers remained at large Tuesday. On the morning of Wednesday, May 14, Border Patrol officers at a checkpoint on Interstate 8 west of Sentinel stopped them for questioning, after seeing them driving suspiciously on a highway service road that no one ever used. When asked to pull into a secondary holding area for further questioning, they took off, eastbound down the interstate, through the desert.

Travis, once described by a military physician's assistant as the worst case of post-traumatic stress disorder she had ever seen, was prone to combat flashbacks. On the gravel road near where he lived, the ping of gravel hitting the underside of a passing car would make him duck. While on vacation with Kellee and the girls once, something at a rest stop suddenly made him think he was back in Iraq. The sensations came without warning and seemed altogether real.

Whatever induced him to drive away, the authorities gave chase, with a Homeland Security helicopter and 20 or so police vehicles joining the pursuit. Eighty miles later, a police spike strip punctured their tires, and they drove on for another mile before coming to rest in the sandy wasteland off the highway.

"I suppose, and we can only guess because we don't have any clue, but with a chase -- and the adrenaline -- I think he just thought he was being pursued by the Iraqis and just felt like he was not going to be taken prisoner and neither was Will," Nancy Twiggs said.

As officers surrounded the vehicle and prepared to approach it, two shots rang out from inside. Travis had shot his brother at point-blank range, then turned his gun on himself.

Ineluctable

Murder-suicide. Casualties of war. Inexplicable, incomprehensible personal loss. They all apply.

"Te-Beaux and Will were inseparable in many ways," the boys' father said last week. "For that to happen, whatever was going through Te-Beaux's mind, when he actually shot his brother, they were in everything together. They had a pact, you can count on it. But those last two minutes of their lives will haunt me forever."

Ten days after their deaths, the brothers who shared so much throughout their lives had a joint funeral in Metairie. Travis was buried with full military honors. The spray of flowers on Will's coffin was draped with a banner that said, "Ineluctable."

Ron Thibodeaux can be reached at rthibodeaux@timespicayune.com or (985) 898-4834.

Ellie