When he came home, "All of my symptoms were back, and now I was in the process of destroying my family," he wrote. "My only regrets are how I let my command down after they had put so much trust in me and how I let my family down by pushing them away."
Kellee Twiggs said her husband was "very, very different, angry, agitated, isolated and so forth," upon his return. "He was just doing crazy things."
She said her husband was treated in the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Medical Center and then sent to a Veterans Administration facility for four months.
Most recently, Travis Twiggs was assigned to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, a job he said helped him "get my life back on track."
"Every day is a better day now," he wrote in the Marine Corps Gazette. "...Looking back, I don't believe anyone is to blame for my craziness, but I do think we can do better."
Twiggs urged others suffering from similar problems to seek help. "PTSD is not a weakness. It is a normal reaction to a very violent situation," he wrote.
Kellee Twiggs said she can't understand why her husband was not sent to a specialized PTSD clinic in New Jersey.
"They let him out. He was OK for a while and then it all started over again," she said.
They let him out. Sadly, Travis Twiggs ended up stealing a car with his brother and attempting to drive off into the Grand Canyon. By the time the cops caught up to the vehicle, Travis Twiggs had killed his brother and then himself.
