A 38-year-old father of two, Sgt. Robert Bales, left, served in the Army for 11 years. He had been deployed to Iraq three times and was on his fourth deployment, this time to Afghanistan. (Reuters / DOD / March 22, 2012)
Researchers Wrestle With How Many Deployments Are Too Many -- USA Today
After nearly 11 years of war and hundreds of millions of dollars in research on the mental health of troops, the military is no closer to understanding how many deployments are too many for individual servicemembers, researchers say.
Military leaders have said the nation has never fought wars this long with this small of a military, deploying troops over and over. Yet questions about how many times a soldier can recycle into combat without psychological harm remain unanswered, reseachers say.
"I think it's definitely disappointing that we don't know. I wish we did," says retired Navy Capt. William Nash, a psychiatrist studying resiliency within Marine battalions.
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My Comment: I suspect that it is different for different soldiers .... but for Sgt. Bales, it appears that this deployment was one too many.
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