WASHINGTON – When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Staff Sgt. Tyson Manker was among the Marines on the front lines.

During the next three-and-a-half years he would face gruesome scenes including dismembered bodies — some of whom he’d killed.

He cleaned up the brains and blood of a friend. He dreamt often of his death.

One fateful night changed his life.

While on leave in Twentynine Palms, California, he learned his parents, married for 34 years, were divorcing. He went out drinking with some other Marines, he said, and ended up smoking marijuana to “self-medicate.”

He was discharged for it, his nearly four-year service deemed less-than-honorable.

Manker’s case illustrates what veterans groups call a lack of recognition by the military of post-traumatic stress disorder as a trigger for minor infractions that have led more than 125,000 post-911 veterans to receive less-than-honorable discharges.

The Vietnam Veterans Association and other groups are asking President Barack Obama in his final days to lift the less-than-honorable stigma on thousands of veterans shown to suffer PTSD.

They’ve asked the same of President-elect Donald Trump.

In a letter to Obama, Vietnam Veterans of America President John Rowan noted that Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter granted pardons to those who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War.

Kristofer Goldsmith, the group’s assistant director for policy and government relations, said it seems unlikely veterans will get similar help.

Neither Obama nor Trump have responded.

“To be honest, it’s not looking good,” he said. “I’m mentally prepared for our country not to help us again.”

A less-than-honorable discharge is less serious than a dishonorable discharge. But it has serious consequences including the loss of Veterans Affairs health benefits and GI Bill education benefits.

Manker said it has also brought shame and feelings of betrayal.

Manker was just 20 when he was part of the Third Battalion Seventh Marine Regiment that lobbed mortars into Iraq before the invasion.

He remembers the coppery taste of blood after one firefight, and the civilians killed during other encounters.

Marines set up roadblocks but sometimes they were around a curve where drivers did not see them until it was too late. Marines would open fire on those who didn’t slow down, he said.

He remembers one civilian who was shot 16 times. As the Marines rushed the man to the hospital, he asked for his mother.

In Kabala, Manker and other Marines chased two trucks carrying artillery shells. As people in one truck got out and ran, he chased a figure and fired tracer rounds.

Walking toward the fallen body, he saw it was a teenage girl.

None of this was taken into account when he was discharged, he said.

He still has strange nightmares about killing his dog, or being Saddam Hussein’s right-hand man, or of machine gun fire kicking up a trail of dirt coming toward him.

He feels left out when other veterans are celebrated.

“I wish I could describe how I feel when we have Veterans Day or Marines Day,” he said. “When other Marines are so proud and boisterous, I have to remember the heartache.”

Former Army Ranger Keith Todd, also discharged less than honorably, said he feels the stigma, too.

He has little hope for the future.

Todd was discharged after being caught driving under the influence while on leave at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He, too, attributes the incident to PTSD from his service in Iraq.

“The place is as crowded as New York City, except everybody walking around has a gun or a bomb,” he said.

Now, Todd said he feels cast out.

“It’s like your first love cheated on you. I was in love with the Army,” he said.

With no education benefits, he has worked at a Dunkin Donuts, in a warehouse and at a hip-hop clothing store – “even though I know nothing about hip hop,” he said.

He now pumps gas in Las Vegas, although he’s saved enough money to start school to become a mechanic.

In December, Congress included language in a defense spending bill trying to help those like Manker and Todd.

It codified a policy enacted by former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that directed military review boards to give “liberal consideration” to actions that might be attributed to a service member’s PTSD.

Nevertheless, for Manker, a naval review board on Tuesday denied his appeal of his less-than-honorable classification. It did not dispute his PTSD, he said, but concluded there was no evidence he smoked marijuana because of his trauma.

Other problems remain that only a pardon could solve, said Michael Wishnie, a Yale law professor who oversees the university’s Veterans Legal Clinic. Review boards can only handle discharges that occurred in the last 15 years, and some post-9/11 veterans are losing their ability to have their discharges upgraded.

Manker, who worked his way through Western Michigan University Law School and now has a private practice near Springfield, Illinois, said it took him five years to compile a case and have his review heard.

Most veterans in his situation, he said, “don’t have the wherewithal to do what I’m doing now.”

Among the worst aspects of the stigma, he said, is that he is not formally recognized as having fought in Iraq.

“I would like it, when I die, for my family to receive a folded flag,” he said.

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

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