WASHINGTON – On Memorial Day weekend nine years ago, Kristofer Goldsmith walked out alone to a field at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

The place is called Warriors Walk, and it is lined with trees to honor those who go to war.

He thought it would be a good place to die.

Goldsmith, a native of Long Island, was 16 when the Twin Towers fell. When he turned 20, he enlisted.

He served as a photographer with the Third Infantry in the slums of Baghdad. He took pictures of mass graves of torture victims.

What happened when he returned stateside, lawmakers and veterans groups say, illustrates a problem that is forcing perhaps tens of thousands of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder out of the military and unable to get mental health care.

Instead, they are left to fend alone with what Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., called at a press conference this week the “invisible wounds of war.”

Once stateside at Fort Stewart, Goldsmith got in fights. He’d been misdiagnosed with a personality disorder. Anti-depressants he was prescribed did nothing.

He couldn’t sleep. Migraines crumpled him to the ground.

In a matter of weeks, he was supposed to go back to Iraq.

“People try to kill themselves for one reason — because they feel like it’s the only option,” he said during an interview. “My lifelong dream to serve — from the time I was a toddler — had tumbled into a nightmare.”

Goldsmith didn’t die from the Percocet and vodka he took at Warriors Walk.

But he wasn’t embraced by the Army for what he’d gone through, either. He was given a general discharge.

In a sense, he was lucky, said Goldsmith, now assistant director of policy and government affairs for the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Those given a general discharge do not qualify for the post-911 GI bill, which offers benefits such as tuition assistance. But he did qualify for Veterans Affairs mental health services, which led to his diagnosis with PTSD.

Others aren’t as lucky. More than 125,000 post-9/11 veterans have been given a more serious less-than-honorable discharge, according to an April report by Harvard University Law School’s veterans legal clinic.

An unknown number were discharged for petty conduct that stemmed from PTSD, the Harvard researchers noted.

“Behavioral changes may result in infractions, which superiors often do not recognize as symptoms of mental health conditions but instead attribute to bad character,” the study said.

It noted a separate study that found Marines diagnosed with PTSD were 11 times more likely to be discharged for misconduct.

Those discharged veterans, without access to mental health care, are more likely to become homeless, end up in jail or commit suicide.

A VA study in July reported 7,400 veterans committed suicide in 2014 – a rate of 20 a day.

“The VA’s regulations create a suicide pipeline: the veterans most at risk of suicide are the ones most likely to be turned away from effective suicide prevention treatment,” the study by the Harvard veterans clinic noted.

Appealing a discharge classification to get health benefits takes an average of three years, and ends up in denials 87 percent of the time.

Appeals boards consider mental health in limited situations, the study said, but not combat performance.

The Senate in June unanimously added a provision to a defense authorization bill to make it easier for veterans to win appeals of denied benefits.

It would require the military to presume those who have served in combat are eligible for mental health benefits if they’ve been diagnosed with PTSD or a traumatic brain injury.

The House, however, did not include a similar provision in its version of the defense bill.

Lawmakers including Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a former Marine infantry officer who served four terms in Iraq, and Peters, a former U.S. Naval Reserve lieutenant commander, are urging members of a House and Senate committee to include the provision in the final version of the bill.

They are also urging President Barack Obama to simply enact the provision.

House Armed Services Committee spokesman Claude Chafin declined comment.

Goldsmith said some House members are concerned about weakening discipline if military supervisors do not have the same ability to threaten the loss of medical and other benefits with a less-than-honorable discharge.

The Defense Department, meanwhile, has issued new policies in recent months saying benefit appeals involving veterans with PTSD and brain injuries should be considered liberally.

Groups including Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, Swords to Plowshares, Student Veterans of America, and the Wounded Warrior Project want the policy put into law.

The Harvard study also found also that the military has been giving more less-than-honorable discharges since 9/11 compared to other periods.

The study found 6.5 percent of veterans who’ve served since 2001 do not qualify for VA mental health care.

Only 2.8 percent of Vietnam War veterans and 1.7 percent of World War II veterans were discharged less than honorably, resulting in a loss of benefits.

The increase since 9/11 doesn’t mean more veterans are committing serious offenses. The study noted the percentage of those given dishonorable discharges has remained steady, at about 1 percent of all discharges.

Peters said the provision now before the committee will get help to more veterans with PTSD.

“The physical injuries — which are easy to see — are no worse than the invisible wounds,” he said.

Moulton recalled being on patrol looking for insurgents in Iraq when a fellow soldier was attacked.

As he struggled with an attacker, said Moulton, “he couldn’t use his gun. He had to kill his enemy with his knife.

“It’s exactly the kind of stuff that leads to being unit lore, but it’s also what leads to post-traumatic stress,” he said.

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at kmurakami@cnhi.com.