Love Is a Battlefield

Does Dodge like the war zone? "I don't look at it like that, sir, I really don't," he says. He enjoys "playing with explosives," and shooting his gun, and forming the tight bonds that can be forged in a hostile setting. But he also feels professional satisfaction. "I haven't lost a single soldier ... and I consider that my biggest accomplishment," says Dodge, whose brother died in a training accident in 1995. "If I wasn't there, I don't know who would do my job. But what I do know is that I would do it better."

Everyone likes doing what they're good at. But soldiers have to weigh the benefits and costs in ways that others don't. The more time soldiers do in war zones, the more likely they are to suffer posttraumatic stress disorder. A mental-health survey conducted by the Army has quantified the psychological wear and tear of repeated tours. As of spring 2008, 27 percent of noncommissioned officers with three or four deployments had shown symptoms of PTSD, compared with 12 percent of those with one tour.

An optimist reading the data might point out that nearly three quarters of NCOs don't suffer any such mental-health symptoms. But in worst-case scenarios, a stressed soldier can be lethal. In early May, 44-year-old Army Sgt. John M. Russell went berserk in a military stress center in Baghdad, killing five fellow soldiers. Russell was weeks away from finishing his third tour in Iraq, and apparently thought the military was trying to get rid of him.

Army Chief Warrant Officer Robert Lakes, 39, knows that war has changed him. Everyone tells him he seems a little different after each new deployment. He looks visibly exhausted at 10 a.m. on a Thursday, sitting in an office with no windows at Fort Campbell, just north of Nashville. "I really got to watch it," he says. "Sometimes you get back from a normal day here [on base in the United States] and you're just blown. You just want to lay down and go to sleep. I didn't quite used to be like that. But that might just be me getting older, too. I can't really point to the war and say that did it."

After clocking an astounding 52 months in Iraq, he's planning to go again. He manages the heavy equipment that goes from Fort Campbell to Iraq, keeps it in working condition in the war zone and then ships some of it back again. That means he deploys early to prepare, and stays longer to make sure all the loose ends are tied up. "It cost me an 18-year marriage," says Lakes with an awkward laugh. "But you know, I just do what they tell me to do, go where they tell me to go. I don't think about it too much."

Lakes has a fiancée now, 38-year-old Pamela Doss. They met on Facebook, and realized they had many shared interests and traits—a love of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a taste for marshmallows burned black. She got into the relationship knowing that he'd be deploying again and again. But she wishes it were otherwise. "I finally met someone I'm compatible with, and I have to share him with the rest of the world."

Lakes could have gotten a transfer and avoided another deployment. But like other soldiers who opt for more tours, he feels that his fellow soldiers depend on him. "There is nobody else in the unit doing my job," he says. "I don't have a choice." He hasn't seen a psychologist one-on-one, but has phoned a help center called Military OneSource to talk over divorce issues and, in one instance, stress over back-to-back deployments when he was "only home a month or so."

Many military personnel say it's not the number of tours that gets to them, but the length of each one. The Army has the longest tours, with soldiers generally doing a year or more. Army Intelligence Officer Jessica Ohle, 42, currently garrisoned at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, has logged 39 months in a combat zone (as well as additional time in the Balkans and Kuwait), and she wants to keep doing it. But she also wants shorter stints. "When I went to Bosnia in 2001, it was a seven-month deployment, and I remember thinking, this is a loooong time," she says. "But then September 11 happened, and now we're doing 12 months. Seven months now seems like a dream to me."

Part of the trouble with long tours is the stress of holding together a normal life back home. "When you're gone so long, you put your whole life on hold," says Ohle. "You can't plan anything." That can be OK if you're single, but Ohle has been dating another Army intelligence officer who is in a different brigade. They met during a training exercise many years ago, and then in 2006 spent a few months together "downrange," as Ohle calls the combat zone. After that, the dating was long distance. They've been "together-together" only since February, and Ohle expects her boyfriend to deploy again sometime this summer.

Whenever she comes back to the United States, Ohle faces culture shock similar to anyone who returns from a foreign land. She's overwhelmed by the food selection in the markets, and the number of people in the aisles. But unlike ordinary travelers, she also needs to keep her anger in check. "When someone with a shopping cart gets in your way, you can't just yell at them to get out of the way," she says. "Interacting with people requires a reset."