Editor’s note: This article first appeared on The War Horse , an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service, under the headline “‘No Purging on my ship.’ She hid an eating disorder and lost her Navy career. It saved her life.” Subscribe to their newsletter .

Leah Stiles kept a dark secret tucked in a pocket of her Navy uniform, something she knew could get her booted from the service.

In the end, it did.

In 2017, her ship, the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush, was at war as part of a strike group that attacked Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq.

For 15 years in uniform, she’d been at war with an eating disorder — a constant urge to purge her meals. She kept a toothbrush in her pocket to gag.

Leah Stiles (Photo by Joe Burba

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