Sgt. Robert Bales and multiple tours of duty: How many is too many?

The tremendous burden that battle places on soldiers – and the notion that it can push some to their breaking point – has long been one of the fatalistically accepted miseries of war.

During the Civil War, this breaking point was called, alternately, “soldier’s heart” and “exhausted heart.” In World War I, it was “war neurosis,” “gas hysteria,” and “shell shock.” Sigmund Freud had his own theory about the “inner conflict” between a soldier’s “peace ego” and its “parasitic double,” the “war ego.”

But the case surrounding Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who stands suspected of gunning down 17 Afghan civilians – including nine children – in a murderous March rampage, is likely to spotlight the unique toll that repeated deployments to decade-long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken on America’s soldiers. 

Bales’s lawyer, John Henry Browne, has hinted that he will argue post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) played a role in his client’s alleged crime. “He doesn’t remember everything the evening in question – that doesn’t mean he has amnesia,” Mr. Browne told reporters. “There are lots of other options.”

Browne might argue, too, that it is the US military’s fault for not properly treating the mental wounds of war of his client, who had deployed to Iraq three times before being sent – against his will, Browne has said – to Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has carefully disavowed Bales’s alleged crime as the lone action of a lone gunman, for which the Pentagon may well seek the death penalty.

But the Pentagon acknowledges, too, the stresses put on its force by repeated deployments. Some 107,000 Army soldiers have been deployed to war three or more times since 2001, or some 20 percent of the active-duty force. More than 50,000 of those currently in uniform have completed four or more combat tours, Army figures indicate.

America’s current conflicts “represent not only the longest wars fought by our Army, but also the longest fought by an all-volunteer force,” placing “tremendous and unique burdens on our soldiers and families as compared to the previous conflicts,” notes a wide-ranging study of soldiers’ mental health released by the Army earlier this year.

The study was particularly adamant that any attempt to view "soldier misconduct in isolation" necessarily "fails to capture the real likelihood that the misconduct was associated with an untreated physical or behavioral health condition, such as increased aggression associated with PTSD." 

That's because in some cases the burdens of repeated deployments have been greater than those troops had endured in World War II, the study warns. The average infantryman in the South Pacific “saw about 40 days of combat in four years” in contrast to a “persistently high” level of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has offered “very few opportunities for individuals to rest, either physically or mentally.”

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