This article, by Aamer Madhani, was originally published in the Chicago Tribune, June 30 2008
BELLMORE, N.Y. Kristofer Goldsmith was so distressed about the prospect of returning to Iraq that he decided he was willing to kill himself to avoid serving a second tour.
Just as Goldsmith's three-year Army contract was to expire, it was extended under the military's "stop loss" program, and his unit was set to deploy to Baghdad to take part in the troop surge. On the day before he was to ship out in May 2007, he took a dozen Percocet painkillers, washed down with more than a liter of vodka.
Soon after Goldsmith was admitted to Winn Army Community Hospital at Fort Stewart, Ga., a senior non-commissioned officer from his brigade visited the young sergeant, along with an Army psychologist, to discuss discharging him from the military.
"We all agreed that it was for the best that my Army career come to an end then," said Goldsmith, 22, who added that he'd scrawled the words "stop loss killed me" in marker on his body before his suicide attempt. "It was a few days later when they told me that they were going to come at me for faking a mental lapse."
Goldsmith's case illustrates the complex decisions facing the U.S. military, which says it is eager to address the mental health problems plaguing its troops while maintaining its warrior ethos and respect for the chain of command.
The rear commander of Goldsmith's unit, Maj. Douglas Wesner of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, quickly initiated an administrative punishment known as an Article 15 against Goldsmith for malingering "that is, feigning a mental lapse or derangement or purposely injuring oneself" to avoid being deployed to Iraq.
Eventually his commanders dropped the Article 15, but not before removing Goldsmith from the service on a general discharge. Because he did not receive an honorable discharge, Goldsmith was stripped of his Montgomery GI Bill benefits, which he'd been counting on to help pay for college.
Goldsmith's tough treatment is not unheard of.
Twenty-one soldiers in Iraq have been punitively discharged since 2003 after being convicted of malingering, according to the Army. And since there has been war, there have been anecdotes about soldiers willing to harm themselves to avoid serving on the front lines.
A soldier was released from a civilian prison last month after he admitted paying a hit man to shoot him in a knee to get out of deploying to Iraq. In the Vietnam War, troops sometimes intentionally didn't take their malaria pills in hopes of being afflicted and sent to the rear to recover, recalled retired Army Col. Ernie Westpheling, who served in Vietnam.
In one incident in the late 1960s, Westpheling recalled helping evacuate a lieutenant who had shot himself in the foot and blamed it on a sniper on his first day in Vietnam.
Goldsmith remains adamant that he did not fake a mental illness. After Goldsmith's discharge, a psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Wesner declined to comment. A 3rd Infantry Division spokesman said that Goldsmith was provided legal counsel and received a medical evaluation before his discharge, but the spokesman declined further comment.
Sitting in his parents' home in this working-class suburb on Long Island, Goldsmith said his mental unraveling began when he returned in 2005 from a yearlong tour in Iraq. He said he was addled by depression and self-medicated with copious alcohol.
The collapse accelerated, he said, after he learned he would be affected by "stop loss."
Since his discharge last August he has been jobless except for a brief stint delivering pizzas.
"I went from being a sergeant responsible for six peoples' lives and millions of dollars in equipment to becoming the pizza delivery boy," Goldsmith said. Goldsmith, who since his discharge has been an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, is one of at least 40,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans diagnosed with PTSD, according to the Pentagon. People with PTSD, an anxiety disorder that can occur after surviving a traumatic event, often endure relationship problems, despair and various physical symptoms.
The Pentagon's figures account only for those who have sought help; a recent study by RAND Corp. put the number closer to 300,000.
In May, the Pentagon reported that 115 U.S. troops had committed suicide in 2007, the highest yearly toll since the military has tracked the figures. The Pentagon acknowledges that 12-to-15 percent of military personnel in the war zones are taking antidepressants or sleep medication.
In recent months, Defense Department officials have poured millions of dollars into programs to help troops deal with PTSD _ including yoga and reiki therapy _ and have acknowledged that more needs to be done to remove the stigma of PTSD in the military community. Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a new policy under which troops no longer have to divulge previous mental health treatment to receive security clearance.
The magnitude of mental health problems is something the Defense Department is only starting to confront, according to some lawmakers.
Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army's top medical officer, also acknowledges that the Army needs to improve facilities and has too few providers of mental-health care.
"I think we can say as a nation that our mental health facilities and access to mental health providers is not adequate to the need right now," Schoomaker said. "So part of the problem that we as a military are suffering is a shared national problem."
Goldsmith said that even before his suicide attempt he was suffering from severe depression and anxiety attacks after returning from his 2005 deployment in Iraq, where he served much of his tour in the Shiite slums of Baghdad's Sadr City.
Residents of the enclave frequently attacked U.S. troops, and the area was a central front in sectarian fighting.
U.S. troops regularly found tortured corpses of Sunni men in Sadr City. Goldsmith was given the task of photographing them _ images that deeply disturbed him, he said. Although he was a strong supporter of the war when he signed up for the Army, he came back from Iraq convinced the continued presence of U.S. forces was doing more harm than good.
When he returned to Fort Stewart, Goldsmith fell into a deep depression.
At first he refused to seek help, saying he thought he would be ostracized or punished. He suffered from anxiety attacks, one was so severe that Goldsmith rushed to the hospital fearing he had a heart attack.
"Before we were heading back to Iraq, [a senior non-commissioned officer] said that if we tried to use mental stress as a way to get out of going, he would see to it that we'd become his personal IED [improvised explosive device] kicker," he said. "No one wanted to be stigmatized."
Goldsmith thought he hit bottom when one night he became so irritated by a man at a party that he choked him until he was unconscious. After that incident, Goldsmith said he realized that he had to seek help regardless of the consequences.
He was ordered to attend mental health counseling and ended up in a crowded group session where the patients' needs differed widely, Goldsmith recalled. "It was almost more destructive than helpful," he said. Some of the soldiers who worked most closely with him have written letters to the Army on his behalf requesting that his discharge be upgraded to honorable. His company and platoon commanders gave him high marks and even recommended him for a Bronze Star at the end of his tour in Iraq.
"If I were to go to war tomorrow, I would want Kris Goldsmith to go with me," Capt. Edward McMichael, who was Goldsmith's company commander in Iraq, said in an interview. "I don't think Kris would fake it."
Before he was discharged, Goldsmith said military lawyers told him that he was eligible to re-enlist, and he could try to earn an honorable discharge and win back his GI Bill benefits.
But he has no intention of going that route. He feels he has already served honorably.
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