The Difficult Path from Soldier to Civilian
This interview with a U.S. veteran offers reflections on war, brotherhood, and the struggles of readjusting to civilian life
Cosmin Anghel is a U.S. Veteran who served honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a soldier, he put his life on the line on countless occasions for us - for his country. Veterans of the U.S. military dedicate their lives to protecting us, but when they return home, the favor often goes unreturned.
“My name is Cosmin Anghel. I joined the U.S. Army in 2002. I deployed to Iraq in 2003, and in Afghanistan in 2005.”
When you first joined the military, what made you decide to do so? Was there a specific moment where you realized you wanted to join, or was it something you always had dreamed of?
“Joining the army was a spur of the moment. Really, I just wanted to see if I could do it - if I was capable of it. When I joined the army, I made sure that I did the Airborne School, which is one of the harder training programs. It was mostly just a feeling of accomplishment that kept me going. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.”
When you first joined, you went through a very rigorous training program. Do you want to describe what that was like?
“Sure. I went to basic training on my birthday, July 30, 2002, and I ended up in Missouri. I had a rude awakening that next morning when I woke up over there and drill sergeants were yelling at you. They loaded us up into cattle trucks and took us to the barracks, and all I was asking myself is, what the heck am I doing here? Why did I do this and how do I get out of it? But then I realized that quitting is not really in me, so I just pushed through. Once I finished basic training, we started to settle down a little bit more. It was more like the classroom kind of environment. You're studying your material and doing physical fitness, but it wasn't that initial shock of waking up and people yelling at you every morning and pulling your bed apart and making you redo it and making sure your shirts and your socks and everything is perfect. There was one test where they would come in and flip a coin, and if it didn’t bounce off your sheets, everything would get pulled off the bed, and you have to redo your bed.
I went to Airborne School, which I think helped, because it takes a lot of physical effort to go. For three weeks, you run from five o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock at night. Even when you stop, you run in place and you go from there. Going from beaches back in Florida to that environment was a big switch.”
Would you mind just setting the scene? Why were you guys [deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan] and what was the task at the time?
“Afghanistan was just an extension of Operation Enduring Freedom. It was mostly to make sure that any al Qaeda camps, and the Taliban, were kept out of Afghanistan. We wanted to stabilize the country. Partially, it was a mission to win the hearts and minds of the locals and show them a better world - improving the infrastructure of the country, giving them a democratically run government, and making sure that we protected that and made it flourish. That was the main mission. Now, we're in 2024, and we all know that it did not go that way. It didn’t go the way that it was planned out.”
Do you feel upset that you put in all this time and energy into a mission that never ended up working?
“I would say, yes, slightly upsetting, but I would say it's more upsetting that the country and the people did not get a good result. It's unfortunate that so many lives were lost. However, there were a lot of good people that I met, so I have the memories of them. I made some great friendships with people that I met over there, and I'm pretty sure I can reconnect with them in a matter of minutes. But yeah, I would say it is upsetting to see that it didn't work out for those that I met, and I know how much they sacrificed to make it work.”
You were 18, you were very young at the time. Let's say, like, the night before you engaged in one of these new missions, what were you thinking and feeling? Were you able to sleep properly?
“The night before we left? No, it was a very scary night. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, and all I was thinking was if I'm ever going to come back home alive, but once we crossed over and the mission started, and all that exhaustion started kicking in, and the adrenaline and sweating and digging the fighting positions and the shooting started, you just forget about it, and you just roll with the punches, and you don't have time to think about how afraid you are until it was all over. And when it's over, you just try to process the things that went by, and cope with it. Four months after the invasion, I think it was March, April, May, June, around June that we returned from Baghdad into Kuwait, and us as a group, as a platoon, started talking about it and kind of decompressing and just trying to get over everything that we saw and went through.
The story I'm going to tell you is from one of my missions in Afghanistan. It was just around the election season in Afghanistan, 2005. We were in this area called Tagab Valley. We were kind of the first ones in the area for many years, US troops that is. There was a very small US presence with some UAE Special Operations troops and Afghani military. We were patrolling, making sure the areas were safe for people to come out and vote. So the first day in, we were roughly about three vehicles and two ATVs. I was riding one of the ATVs on our way back to the camp that we were setting up. I drove over an IED and blew up. So that's how that mission started. Nobody got hurt. I didn't get hurt. I got super lucky. I had an upgraded ATV with a blast plate underneath. The plate absorbed the entire impact. I was very confused when I got off of it - shocked. I actually thought it was somebody else that got hurt. I could not realize what had just happened. Was it just in my head? I was running around asking, who got hurt and if they were okay, and everybody was asking me if I'm okay. Once it sank in it was my ATV, the first thing I did was check my limbs. Then I checked my head and checked my back. I was good, and finally got off the ATV. We drove out of that area safely. There was a lot of fighting that night – small fire, RPGs – and the next couple of days, it just continued.
On one occasion we got in a heavy firefight, we were a small team patrolling a village, so we had to call for air support, and we got two Harriers, US Marines pilots - and it was one of the wildest things you could ever see. They were flying about 30 feet above ground, shooting and going back up and then coming back down. That's kind of how we were able to get out of the village unscathed”
In the moment, it was you and the four others against the whole village. What was it like? What were you feeling? What were you thinking?
“This happened about three years into my military life, and at that point you have all the training that kicks in, and you don't have time to fear anything. It's just automatic muscle memory. You take your defensive position, you make sure your weapons work, and you're loaded and loaded, and you shoot back, and you check with your teams, and you call for air support. The adrenaline kicks in, and you really forget everything; you don't feel any exhaustion till you're completely removed from the situation. Only then does that adrenaline rush go away - but in that moment, you don't feel anything else, other than that automated self preservation and training that kicks in, right?”
What was the process like readjusting back into the normal world?
“Readjusting to normal life. Wow. I don't think there's anybody who ever helped us readjust. That's a really tough one, and come to think of it, nobody helped you out. When we came back, we drank a lot. We were together and that was it. Yeah, there was no one, nobody came in and helped us readjust to the civilian world.”
As a veteran, what programs would you want to see put in place to fix this?
“I think counseling helps. Making sure that veterans and soldiers coming in from a combat environment understand that it's okay to talk about what happened. It’s important to have somebody to talk to. Having programs that allow for that would be great. I don't know if they have them now in the military, but it would definitely help out in the civilian world, when you go through a traumatic experience. With firefighters or EMTs or paramedics going through traumatic experiences, there's always somebody that comes in and talks to them, so something along those lines would be great to have implemented.”
What would you want the world to know about being a soldier?
“It's the pride that you feel, even, 20 years later, 20 plus years later, you feel that pride. You feel that brotherhood and the relationship that you created with people, and even if you don't get to interact with them on a daily basis, it's just like a brother that you haven't seen in a while, and all that fraternity that you create. During these years, that's probably what I have missed.”