https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning#Enlistment_in_the_U.S._Army When he was 13 he began to question his sexual orientation, and around this time his parents divorced....
Manning went through basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, but six weeks after enlisting was sent to the discharge unit. He was allegedly being bullied, and in the opinion of another soldier was having a breakdown. The soldier told The Guardian: "The kid was barely five foot ... He was a runt, so pick on him. He's crazy, pick on him. He's a faggot, pick on him. The guy took it from every side. He couldn't please anyone." Denver Nicks writes that Manning, who was used to being bullied, fought back – if the drill sergeants screamed at him, he would scream at them – to the point where they started calling him "General Manning."[18]
The decision to discharge him was revoked, and he started basic training again in January 2008. After graduating in April, he moved to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he trained as an intelligence analyst, receiving a TS/SCI security clearance (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information). According to Nicks, this security clearance, combined with the digitization of classified information and the government's policy of sharing it widely, gave Manning access to an unprecedented amount of material. Nicks writes that he was reprimanded while at Fort Huachuca for posting three video messages to friends on YouTube, in which he described the inside of the "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility" (SCIF) where he worked.[19]...
A month later, in November 2009, he was promoted from Private First Class to Specialist. That same month, according to his chats with Lamo, he made his first contact with WikiLeaks, shortly after it posted 570,000 pager messages from the 9/11 attacks, which it released on November 25.[24] Also in November, Manning wrote to a gender counselor in the United States, said he felt female, and discussed having sex reassignment surgery. The counselor told Steve Fishman of New York Magazine that it was clear Manning was in crisis, partly because of his gender concerns, but also because he was opposed to the kind of war in which he found himself involved.[25]
He was by all accounts unhappy and isolated. Because of the army's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy (known as DADT, which was repealed in September 2011), he was not allowed to be openly gay, though he apparently made no secret of it; his friends said he kept a fairy wand on his desk. When he told his roommate he was gay, the roommate responded by suggesting they not speak to each other. His working conditions – 14–15 hour night shifts in a dimly lit secure room – did not help his emotional well being.[26] On December 20, 2009, after being told he would lose his one day off a week for being persistently late, he overturned a table in a conference room and damaging a computer that was sitting on it before his arms were pinned behind his back. Several witnesses to the incident believed his access to sensitive material ought to have been withdrawn at that point. The following month, he began posting on Facebook that he felt alone and hopeless.[27] 
