--- title: Veterans Day: The Real Cost of Killing an Enemy During War description: A personal essay from Drew Pham, a 27-year-old former Army captain. canonical: https://time.com/collections/vets/3525408/i-killed-an-enemy-in-afghanistan-and-now-im-fighting-for-my-own-life/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-10T17:58:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-02T23:02:42.753Z article:section: U.S. og:title: I Killed an Enemy in Afghanistan—and Now I'm Fighting for My Own Life og:description: A personal essay from Drew Pham, a 27-year-old former Army captain. og:url: https://time.com/collections/vets/3525408/i-killed-an-enemy-in-afghanistan-and-now-im-fighting-for-my-own-life/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf3620fe6b6e3228a/698767a9f887dc800de8841b/2014_10_19_andrew_pham_111.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: I Killed an Enemy in Afghanistan—and Now I'm Fighting for My Own Life og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: I Killed an Enemy in Afghanistan—and Now I'm Fighting for My Own Life twitter:description: A personal essay from Drew Pham, a 27-year-old former Army captain. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf3620fe6b6e3228a/698767a9f887dc800de8841b/2014_10_19_andrew_pham_111.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Nov 10, 2014 # I Killed an Enemy in Afghanistan—and Now I'm Fighting for My Own Life > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Drew Pham](https://time.com/author/drew-pham/) ## Drew Pham  Andrew Pham, 26, formerly a Captain with the US Army in the 10th Mountain Division, with his wife Molly Pearl, 25, at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City where Pham received a bone marrow transplant. He has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He had been deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 - 2011, serving in Wardak Province. The Veterans Administration pays for all his cancer related treatment considering it service connected. The VA will pay for four years and then re-evaluate his condition, Pham said. Discussing his illness, he said, " "One of the hardest things about the disease is that’s its impossible to know what caused it. I think it’s unfortunately this weird randomness that I have leukemia and no one else I served with that I know of does because you want to be able to say that good things happen to good people. I have a greater than 80% chance of surviving the year. Beyond that, I don’t really know. No one really talks about it I tell everyone that I have a very good prognosis so they don’t worry." While at the hospital he has been having " fever dreams". In the dreams, he said, “Our country has to go back to war and the doctors tell me my cancer has come back, so my mortality is directly connected in the dream to what happens in Afghanistan” Andrew Pham, 26, formerly a Captain with the US Army in the 10th Mountain Division, with his wife Molly Pearl, 25, at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City where Pham received a bone marrow transplant. He has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He had been deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 - 2011, serving in Wardak Province. The Veterans Administration pays for all his cancer related treatment considering it service connected. The VA will pay for four years and then re-evaluate his condition, Pham said. Discussing his illness, he said, " "One of the hardest things about the disease is that’s its impossible to know what caused it. I think it’s unfortunately this weird randomness that I have leukemia and no one else I served with that I know of does because you want to be able to say that good things happen to good people. I have a greater than 80% chance of surviving the year. Beyond that, I don’t really know. No one really talks about it I tell everyone that I have a very good prognosis so they don’t worry." While at the hospital he has been having " fever dreams". In the dreams, he said, “Our country has to go back to war and the doctors tell me my cancer has come back, so my mortality is directly connected in the dream to what happens in Afghanistan”Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME _Drew Pham, 27, is a former Army captain who deployed to Afghanistan’s Maidan Wardak province from 2010 to 2011\. He lives in New York City._ Everything in Afghanistan has a different sense of proportion. It’s as if you are living in a different world. The Taliban would attack us, and part of what I did was fight insurgents. One time, I killed a man—an insurgent who was setting up an ambush against us. I shot him with my M4 carbine as he was reaching for a Russian hand grenade. At first I was elated. I felt flushed, excited. After I killed him, I had to stay on the radio and coordinate with the air weapons team that was above us and talk to the logistics convoy, but most of the time it was just me and him. The desert has a moon dust quality. His eyes were coated in dust, and I tried to blink them for him because for some reason I thought all of the dust in his eyes must be very uncomfortable. I went through the man’s things. He had a little pair of folding scissors, a red cap stuffed in his pocket, some tissues, chewing tobacco. Back at the base, the intel officer went through the man’s phone, pulled me into his office and said, “Yeah! This was a good kill! This guy was a f\*\*\*ing cell leader.” He showed me pictures of the man alive. And it was just bizarre. It was strange to see this guy sitting serenely, just waiting, drinking tea. I keep telling people this story as if saying it somehow reduces the effect of what happened. But I feel a lot of guilt still. When I got back to Fort Polk, Louisiana, my combat memories kept popping up, no matter where I was or what I was doing—at my desk at work, on a run, in my car, touching my wife. Can you imagine what it feels like to see the man you killed when you try to be with the person that you love? Then in February 2014, after I had moved to New York because my wife was admitted to social work school, I went to the ER because I was having recurring fevers. I thought they’d just give me an antibiotic, but I got diagnosed with leukemia. I just thought, When is this going to end? I went to Afghanistan, I had to deal with combat stress back home, and I just felt like I wasn’t catching a break. There are a lot of parallels between this illness and being scared in the way that we were overseas. Cancers—you don’t see them until they hit you, and that’s how an IED more or less operates. In both cases, psychologically, you’re constantly in fear. I’ve been in remission since June 2014, but to be honest, I think my wife Molly is the only thing that really keeps me going. When I got diagnosed, she made like 50 little origami stars for me to unravel, and she wrote a note on each one of them, so every day, I opened one up and it would say something like, “One of these days, you’ll be able to walk into a bar knowing you’re the biggest bad a\*\* in the room.” It’s those things that help me believe that if the Taliban can’t kill me, cancer’s not going to kill me. _—as told to Olivia B. Waxman_  Former Army captain Andrew Pham, 27, who has had leukemia, in his hospital room at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City after receiving a bone marrow transplant. Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  He deployed to Afghanistan's Maidan Wardak province with the 10th Mountain Division. The Veterans Administration pays for his cancer-related treatment, considering it service-connected, Pham says. Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  Pham, with wife Molly Pearl, 25, had fever dreams. In one, “Our country has to go back to war, and the doctors tell me my cancer has come back, so my mortality is directly connected in the dream to what happens in Afghanistan." Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  "One of the hardest things about the disease is that’s its impossible to know what caused it," Pham says. Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  "It's this weird randomness that I have leukemia and no one else I served with that I know of does because you want to be able to say that good things happen to good people," Pham says. Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  A baseball cap that Pham used to wear during his deployment that has the Afghan Army patch and "God, Duty, Country" written in Pashto on it. Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  Pham with his wife Molly and friends at their apartment in Ridgewood, Queens, New York City. Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  They were celebrating his 27th birthday. Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  "I tell everyone that I have a very good prognosis so they don’t worry," Pham says. Nina Berman—NOOR for TIME  He had gotten home from the hospital just two days before. 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