It seemed like an ordinary day in the emergency room at Memorial Hospital in Miramar. Erwig Irigoyen had settled into his nursing shift tending to broken arms or accidental cuts. And then, in came a man, hands oozing and charred from a campfire.

The smell of flesh and look of pain in the man’s eyes took Irigoyen back to a dark place. Only eight months earlier, Irigoyen had been stationed in a military hospital in Afghanistan, tending to soldiers with head-to-toe burns. Suddenly, Irigoyen felt his emotions take over: “I was almost in tears.”

For thousands of returning military veterans like Irigoyen, 46, transitioning back into civilian life means going back to jobs they left and seeing daily situations through different eyes. It also means coming to grips with being one of the fortunate soldiers who returned from the war zone to still have a job.

“I know I’m lucky,” Irigoyen said, who lost his position in radiology, but was reassigned to the emergency room when he came back after nearly two years in the war zone.

As soldiers and military members return from the front lines, the challenge of reintegrating into the civilian workforce has proved a monumental challenge — both logistically and emotionally.

Some have had to assert their rights under federal law to get the jobs back they left when deployed. Others are returning to find themselves without employment. Because of the recession, many have found the jobs they left are gone, their positions eliminated or their employers closed up. Some of the younger members of the military don’t have much work experience and face significant disadvantages competing for jobs.

With the country struggling to emerge from a recession, veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq have some of the highest unemployment rates in the country, 12.1 percent on average through 2011, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The reality of life after war and a new work-life balance has been harsh for these men and women. After years of constant deployments and relocation, most veterans want work that sustains a family and is in a place where they can put down roots. For a soldier who has led a squad into battle or orchestrated field logistics, being jobless has been devastating. There are approximately 18 suicides every day of veterans returning from the combat zone in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“You come back to the civilian world and it feels like employers don’t’ recognize or care what you’ve done in the military or your military training and education, “ says Sergio Camero, an army medic who returned from Iraq in January 2011, worked for the military for a few months and then has been job-hunting for eight months. “It’s stressful. You’re competing with others who are not as qualified but will work for barely anything because they are desperate to work.”

Camero, 24, said the few job offers he initially received were at such low pay levels, he didn’t feel he could support his wife and newborn son. A few weeks ago, he landed a job in Miami as a site supervisor with G4S Secure Solutions USA, a national security services provider who has recruited more than 2,000 military veterans. Camero will start his fulltime post on March 9. “It’s a sense of relief. It’s been a rough transition, but hopefully things will start getting smoother.”