Original subtitles

- As a former United States Marine,

this battlefield called out to me personally.

- I was with the U.S. Marine Corps.

Ahh.

I just felt like there was more I needed to do.

Move! Move! Move!

Someone will get hurt, we'll stabilize them

so they will stay alive until the next place.

- A lot of these people are children over here fighting.

They don't have the experience we have.

- In 2008 I got diagnosed with cancer.

I was taking about 1,000 milligrams

of Oxycodone a day,

so I come over here doing what I love to do.

- Once you experience combat, the adrenaline rush

is like nothing you'll experience anywhere.

It's got me hooked, I guess.

- ISIS, the most dangerous terrorist group on earth.

They've brutally conquered territories

all across the Middle East

and spread fear across the globe.

Their goal is to create a worldwide Islamic state,

and they will stop at nothing to achieve it.

Against the advice of the U.S. military,

some Americans are fighting back.

- In the truck! In the truck!

- This isn't just their war.

It's everybody's problem.

- Hold him! Somebody grab him!

- Some of us were not able to just sit back

and watch this happen on the news.

- We're men of action, not men of words over here.

- This is their story.

- A deadly California shooting rampage,

bloody streets and a violent standoff.

The female shooter posted a pledge of allegiance

to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook.

- Since the rise of ISIS,

we've watched their terror spread across the globe.

Why the nations of the world aren't here ensuring

that these people are eradicated is beyond me.

It's the reason I came.

It's the reason any of us came,

is to take the fight straight to Daesh.

Right now, unfortunately we're static on the Euphrates River

in more of a defensive posture.

It's been about a month since we have gotten mortared.

If we take sniper fire,

they typically shoot over the buildings.

- We can probably stay here for eight months,

and it will just be the same.

- Time and time again we hear

that they keep Westerners out of the fight.

- The only way to get in the fight

is to be proactive about it.

For the next six months maybe to a year that I'm in the country,

I'm just gonna chase the fight.

- No. Well, what you can't do

is just place all your eggs in one basket

and come out here and sit here for four months.

- I think the difference between PJ and myself,

he wants to immediately seek action.

I would sit there and weigh the options out.

PJ is focused on fighting street to street,

and until he finds that,

I don't think he's gonna be at peace.

- Norway and I, we're gonna be leaving Jarabulus

and moving towards the next operation.

- Yeah.

- Jeremiah will not be.

We'll be going our separate ways at this point.

[engine starts]

- Damn, we don't have to push it today.

- Fixed it?

At the end of the day, we're brothers.

You form a brotherhood out here.

- Nobody's leaving on bad terms.

They're gonna go do their thing.

I'm gonna figure out what exactly is gonna go on,

go back home or stay here and relocate somewhere else.

Tel Tamir is a city

that just a year ago was occupied by ISIS.

Since the liberation of Tel Tamir,

it's kind of been a supply hub for the YPG.

It's only a few thousand people,

but it is the trade center in that region.

For now we're gonna be holding here

waiting for orders on the upcoming operation.

Nonstop action.

- In this Christian village that has been abandoned,

we find a lot of personal items,

photo albums, wedding photos,

and it makes you sort of think what's happened to people.

When the Daesh took it over in 2014,

they executed 300 civilians,

and right before they got pushed out,

they blew up the church.

- Now that I'm in Tel Tamir,

I have a few new guys in my platoon.

- Who's got the light?

- We have one fellow Michigander, Jeff.

- This is the correct way right here.

- Firat, who's a Swedish Kurd,

and he speaks both English and Kurdish fluently.

- I know you're strong, PJ.

- And then there's Levi.

- I suppose the ice cream man in Syria--

- Yeah. [all laugh]

What sound do you think the truck makes?

Do you think it's like a song or what?

- Levi's the kind of guy that everybody wants around

because he's always a morale boost.

He's always making jokes.

- This is not the worst place

that I've ever done stand-up comedy.

It's just like Cleveland basically,

you know, except cleaner and with less God damn Ohioans.

[all laugh]

- If we hear a car pull up,

Sea Pine's on gate duty,

so we don't have to worry about them being stopped.

[all laugh]

And if it is Daesh, we can only hope

that they mistake his snoring for bixie fire.

[all laugh]

You know, oh, the infidels

have superior firepower, Achmed.

Turn around.

[all laugh]

I am an American volunteer here

fighting with the Kurds against ISIS.

I am 24 years old,

originally from Reno, Nevada.

Oh, God, it's the Biggest Little City in the World.

It's looks like Tachewene, you know.

It's like I'm begging for the Death Star

to blow me up there.

[all laugh]

- Not a lot...

as you can tell.

[all laugh]

Thank you and good night.

[applause] - Beautiful.

- I came out here last year,

but my mom and my dad and my sister,

they don't exactly know that I'm here right now.

Anything that I can do to help stop ISIS

is what I'm gonna do.

- All of you motherfuckers are going down.

[all speaking at once]

[laughing]

- Detroit, Michigan.

- Huh? - Detroit, Michigan.

- And he said, no, here we're all in one struggle, one fight,

and the only thing that separates us right now

is our languages.

- Apparently everything is pointing towards Al-Shaddadi,

a city of 15,000 people between Raqqa and Mosul.

- Mosul and Raqqa are the two major strongholds of ISIS.

It's very important that we control this main supply route

to disrupt the reinforcements

that they could send between their two capital cities.

- Based on the tactical importance of Shaddad,

I think they're gonna try and hold it as much as possible.

[shouting]

[gunfire]

- They'll be fighting tooth and nail

to hold what they have left.

- The main thing that kills people

are probably mines and I.E.D.s.

- They've definitely mastered it, man.

- You know, you've got, like, artillery shells,

and you got little pressure plates,

two pieces of metal wrapped in plastic.

- Dig it in the side of a road.

You step on it...

you're a goner.

[shouting]

- When ISIS invaded Mosul,

they gained access to American weapons

that the United States had been supplying to the Iraqi Army

for a decade,

including surface to air missiles, mortars, artillery.

I mean, these guys have tanks.

ISIS may even have access to old Iraqi chemical weapons.

The biggest threat comes from the unknown.

In this new unit, I don't have anyone else basically

that has the experience from my original group,

so any training, anything I can give these guys, it's important.

Not everybody wants to be the leader

because not everybody wants to step into a role

that they could possibly fail.

And when you fail playing this game,

you fail miserably because people get killed.

- You've got shit all over your flak.

Oop! [laughs]

- Actually, you still have a lot of blood there.

- Hey, hey.

Yeah, I have blood there and there and there.

We do two ambulances here and here.

- Yeah. [speaking foreign language]

- We're outside Bashiqa,

which has been under ISIS control for over two years.

- We're gonna move up to the Peshmerga.

It seems they've taken this first village

and set up a casualty collection point.

The ground forces

are about to go push to the next few villages.

- We're trying to find a balance

of making sure we're close enough to treat,

but not too close to the fight,

because we have unarmored vehicles.

- How do I say "bad idea" in Kurdish?

[gunfire] - [sighs]

- Whoo-ee!

- My entire life I wanted to go into the military.

In high school I was actually going into the Army

and I got in a fight and I broke my skull.

I had an epidural hematoma,

which is a giant blood clot in my head.

The military was, like, nope, can't do that.

I cried that day.

That was pretty rough,

and it has a lot to do with why I'm here.

I don't know, man, like, I need to have somebody shoot at me.

The problem is

is we got guys deeper into the city on the rooftops,

they can see us, but not the Peshmerga.

- Are you guys aware there's an I.E.D right next to us?

- Yes, we're aware.

- Why aren't they pushing forward?

- I'm gonna go find out what's going on.

- Okay.

- When I first started thinking about coming to the Middle East,

it was to go to Syria.

I figured, well, once I'm here,

maybe I can meet some people who know I'm serious.

Apaches above us, so...

[gunfire]

Whew. That sounds fucking close.

Within a few days is where I met Pete.

- Hustle up, mate.

- Don't look that way. Go that way.

At this point,

someone needs to pull up the picture of Derek

when I first met him

and he had these gnarly muttonchops.

[laughs]

He looked like such a jackass, but a lovable one.

I think he was trying to impress me in the beginning

'cause I was in the military

and I'd been here for a month longer than him.

Oh, man, he's a good fuckin' solid dude.

- That was actually a first for us.

We've never had to fall back before.

We've considered it,

we've had situations where things got hairy,

but that's the first time that we've actually pulled back.

- All right, you're right-handed, right?

Let me teach you something.

Weapon drawn, mag out, straight up into it.

I've been training these guys on tactics

as far as firing and maneuvering,

firing positions,

how to move from room to room,

banging it into these guys' heads.

What I like is the leg tap.

Give me a tap with your--

No, no, no, with your leg into me. Boom.

My barrel is pointed with my finger at that corner.

Pop, pop, pop, I know I'm putting rounds in that corner.

When I met Levi in Tel Tamir,

and I was, like, who is this guy, you know?

Who is this joker?

And he's like, hey, what's going on?

Can you show me where ISIS is?

He was curious. He wanted to know.

- Move.

- Maybe four days later it was my birthday,

and he was like, hey, I got fire watch.

It's your birthday. Just chill out.

- Bro, I've literally never seen one of these before.

- Either have I.

- Yeah? - It's simple as [bleep], man.

Nonstop he wants to train with me,

to the point of aggravating me almost at times.

- Like, how do you-- - Hang on, hang on.

But this is what's most important to all of us here

is training with each other, coming to trust each other,

to cover each other sixes.

Pull the trigger, slide it in.

- This is my second time in country.

You know, I came out here

because ISIS has been committing atrocities

against the people of the world,

and especially my fellow Americans.

I'll always defend the people that I love back home.

- Certainly I was never told

that he was planning to go hang out

with the Marines or anything.

It just kind of all of a sudden that was what he was doing.

Pretty soon it was very apparent that was who he was.

That probably had an awful lot to do

with his dad being a veteran.

- I spent three tours in Vietnam.

I got wounded twice.

It was a meat grinder and I was glad to get out of it

and, you know, I'm lucky to be here I guess.

- He had his whole heart set on being a Marine,

but from birth his vision was terrible.

- I was relieved when they wouldn't take him

because of his eyes,

but he sidestepped it, you know.

Smarter than I thought he was. [laughs]

- He came home after about four months,

and he was so glad to get back,

and he said, "I'm never leaving the U.S. again.

"I'm never leaving the U.S. again,

"and I'm never fighting again.

I've had enough fighting for six lifetimes."

- After those Marines got killed

in that recruiting station in Tennessee

by that self-anointed Daesh warrior,

and the Paris attacks, they just kept telling me

it's someone else's turn, you know.

But that's just it. No one else is gonna go.

- [speaking foreign language]

- I started working my ass off at a dishwashing job

to get enough money to go over here,

and, you know, the rest is history.

- What are you gonna tell your parents

if something happens to you?

- Well, depending on what happens,

like, I won't-- I won't really have to, like--

- When I have guys joining my team

that are that much younger than me,

I mean, it's natural to just kind of spread your wings

and try and take someone under your protection if you can.

So, yeah, I mean, I look at this guy like a little brother.

- We are here at the upcoming Taylor Swift concert,

and as you can tell, it's vacant beyond all recognition.

Back to you in the studio, Dennis.

- We'll piggyback our fire watch,

and we'll just do three hours together out here.

We'll be out here for twice as long,

but you're there with your brother

so we can bullshit with each other and pass the time.

Right now all that's on my mind is this upcoming operation.

Coming into Shaddadi, we really have no idea

how many insurgents are holed up.

It could be a hundred, it could be a thousand.

We'll take any fight in any way, shape, or form we can get it.

[explosion]

- We're currently staged in Tel Tamir

about to go on the Shaddadi operation.

So we've been granted the opportunity to go into Tel Tamir

and contact our loved ones back home.

It's one of the few towns in this region

that actually has access to the Internet.

- I got a message out letting my parents know

I'd be off the grid for a while so they don't freak out.

I think it's still logging all the messages to me,

and the strange Daesh friend requests I get every so often.

They'll use some obviously fake profile like a beautiful woman,

and they're, like, where are you?

It looks like you're in Kurdistan somewhere.

What are you doing there?

121 friends posted on my timeline for my birthday.

It's the big dirty 30.

It's my third birthday in the Middle East.

I had two in Iraq and now one here.

So it's not my first rodeo.

Time stops moving for us when we come out here,

but it doesn't stop moving back home.

- You know, I had him when I was 30.

How different he is at 30 than I was, you know.

I was having my first child, and he's fighting war in Syria.

- Look it, look it! - What is it?

- My first bow and arrow!

- Even when he was young

and had little toys he was playing with,

it was defeat the bad guy,

trying to save the world.

Never wanted to sit still.

He always wanted to be doing something.

- Jason, get up here and get away from the pond.

- PJ and his dad are a lot alike.

They're both very headstrong.

- No, no. Pull it up and slide it.

When your kids get to be 12, 14 years old,

you're all of a sudden stupid as a rock.

They know everything.

So then you get the headbutting stuff going on.

Listen, you graduate,

I'll send you to college or there's the driveway.

And he come back and said, "well, I joined the Marines."

[chuckles] I didn't see that one coming.

- He was 19 when he left.

I thought he was too young, but he came back a man.

He came back a man.

[gunfire]

- My time in the Marine Corps,

I was a squad leader by my second tour,

calling in medivacs,

patrolling the streets of a hostile city

with 11 other guys,

and their lives are in my hands.

You see a bitter side of life

that most teenagers don't experience ever,

and a lot of people, they don't cope so well

coming back in the civilian world.

- The more you come over here

and the more you do this kind of work,

it takes a mental toll on you,

the uncertainty of it,

the unknowing, I guess, of it all.

This is gonna be my last step.

With the group splitting,

I miss that camaraderie that we had,

and now it's not there anymore,

so you kind of have to find something else

to fill its place with.

Oh, man.

I'm ready to get off this fucking mountain already.

Before I came over here,

I gave my family specific instructions

on if I die to throw a death party.

Gonna have a keg, give some blunts out.

So a few people are hoping I don't make it back.

Let's get the [bleep] outta here.

I'd like to be there for that party, too.

That'd be pretty sick.

I don't know why I'm still doing this.

I feel like maybe I'm still trying to find my calling.

You know, I dropped out of high school and joined the military.

That's all I knew.

I want to feel like there's better for me than this.

Nobody should have to succumb to war to be a better person.

So I'm gonna bgoing back home for a little bit.

I want to see my family at Christmas

and spend the holiday with them.

Am I gonna come back? I'm not sure yet.

I'll figure that out when I get home

and see the family and everything.

- You go ahead.

- Merry Christmas. - Merry Christmas.

- We're glad to see you.

- How you doing?

Y'all look great.

I got a bowl.

First time I've smoked weed in over seven months.

Cheers.

- Yeah. - Whoo-hoo.

When I first got here and saw my family and saw some friends,

I was ready to get back home.

I just hung out and got [bleep] up in America.

It feels good.

East Tennessee!

I don't even know what I want to do with my life still.

I can't do college.

I can't sit in a classroom and learn for years on end.

I can't work a 9 to 5 job in an office inside,

so I honestly don't know what I'm gonna do.

- Cheers. - Cheers.

- It's hard to get back home

and just relax and just turn off the switch.

I can't talk like I talk over there.

I can't do the things that I do over there.

It's not accepted here.

To be able to turn that switch on and off,

it's like a light bulb.

Every time you turn it on,

the chances increase for it to blow.

[laughs]

I would have been in jail by now

if I would have stayed here.

That's what I'm afraid of,

falling back into the realm of drugs,

hard drugs, you know, like pills and stuff like that.

I put on this personification

that I'm, like, happy-go-lucky, everything's cool.

Being here in the states, I'm as happy as I'm gonna be,

but it's not as good as it is over there.

You guys want a beer?

All right.

Nobody here knows how good they have it.

They're all complacent.

You can see it in their faces.

If Daesh came here and started attacking,

a lot of these guys around here would be fucked.

They're soft.

Being back home around people, it's hard to talk to them.

It's hard to associate with them,

it's hard to relate to them in any measure.

I don't know how to...be.

I don't know how to be.

- [laughs]

That's what I'd like to be. [laughs]

- [squeals]

- Right now we're at our old location

that we've been at for the last few days,

and we're packing up and we're gonna go closer to the battle.

- We're setting up at the northeastern corner of Gogjali,

which is the last village east of Mosul.

Mosul's right there.

It's super creepy being in here.

There's still gunfire all over the place.

[gunfire, explosion]

- We are about as close as you can get

without actually being in the fighting units.

We're always trying to make this balancing act

of how close do we get without putting ourselves in harm's way,

and I think we've pushed the envelope.

- Are you okay?

Where was the V.B.I.E.D. in relation to you?

- At one point, Kurdish Peshmerga

actually retreated behind our casualty collection point,

so we knew we were probably a little too far forward.

[gunfire]

- Your friend is shooting, and now Daesh is shooting back.

- Derek's an asshole, but he's an asshole

to just about everyone at the same level.

For some reason I like that about him.

So we were debating earlier

whether we should carry weapons or not.

- Are you? - Yeah. What's the deal?

There's, like, guns and, like, bandages.

- Yeah, okay. What do you think the gun's for?

- Well, shooting people, obviously.

- For what? Why would I shoot someone?

- To kill them. - To kill them, okay,

but why would I kill them or try to kill them rather?

- Well, you would say for self defense then I guess.

- Yeah, I would, definitely.

I don't really care about, like, oh, you can't carry a gun

and save a little girl's life,

like, so I just don't wanna get killed.

I still have an urge to fight.

It's not the only reason I came here,

but growing up as a kid and reading about guys

that are put in these dangerous situations

and rise above it,

I wanted to put myself to the ultimate test

and put myself in that position.

Playing high school football

is like that first level of brotherhood

that you can experience as a young man,

but then military or combat is that times a thousand.

[men laugh]

That camaraderie,

that brotherhood taken to another level.

Come on, man, there's fucking bodies on this thing.

- War, you taste it?

- Okay, I got an IV line ready.

- How's he looking?

It was like a friendship of necessity in the beginning.

I needed him

because I couldn't deal with all this shit by myself.

The artery wasn't stopped.

- We'll just say he made it.

War sucks,

but it's one of the most revealing things

a human being can go through.

You find out a lot about yourself

and your friends very quickly.

Valentine's Day 2011, one of my best friends,

my roommate at that time in Afghanistan, Andy Carpenter,

gets shot in the neck.

- [laughs] Stop.

Stop. Don't break the camera. Don't play around.

- And Carter is out there, he's doing CPR.

Cabesas was doing CPR.

And I knew in that exact moment

I can't be a part of that.

It's gonna bring emotion to the entire thing.

My job right now is securing this sector, so I did.

I need more gauze now.

- IV! IV!

- Move!

- [speaking foreign language]

- Oh, you got it?

- What do you need? What do you need?

- He's gone.

- He's bleeding out? - Yeah.

- He's bled out, man.

Body bag.

You know, like, Andy was a good friend

who was shot and killed or was dying

and I couldn't do anything about it.

- [sobbing]

- I thought about that a lot,

the what ifs in a situation like that.

In the beginning I thought we had a shot.

That was the bitch of it.

What brought me here?

Adventure, adrenaline, excitement.

But in the end, I think it's gonna be guilt

that'll keep me here.

- The upcoming operation is a morale raiser for everyone.

Everybody here wants to fight.

I wish we could go tomorrow.

With the platoon I'm with, I'm very happy with these guys.

We've been training together, everything looks good.

All we can do is hope

that we're selected to be the first in,

to be the point men, to be the tip of the spear.

- Two weeks ago, I guess.

So I'm not--I've been a lot filthier than I am now.

- What kind of spices do we have other than salt?

- Yeah, salt is fine.

- She's not really my girlfriend, you know,

but I'm kind of hoping that she would be one day.

You mind if I, like, say something to her?

Like, hey, Hailey.

Here we are in the Rosh garden,

and, you know, I'm just looking forward

to seeing you when I get back home, okay?

You know, take care.

- We got the word

that we're gonna be moving out towards Al-Shaddadi.

What we're gonna be doing is taking one town at a time,

one city at a time, one riverfront at a time,

pushing into Shaddadi neighborhood by neighborhood.

We have to be careful.

You can't tell at all who the enemy is at this point.

- Apparently these guys were Daesh informants.

They can easily send guys up here

to just get visual of whatever they can see.

They'll head back and let Daesh know.

These villages around these areas,

it's very possible they were sympathetic towards Daesh.

[honking]

- Huh?

- Sometimes you have to deal with your occupiers to survive

until you can get your family out

or maybe you're just too poor to get your family out,

so you just hope for somebody else to come in.

ISIS has proven time and time again

they will do anything to reign supreme

and in control of the local population.

They have so much fear driven inside of these people,

if you disagree with them, you're killed.

And that's why we're going in to liberate these cities,

to stop that happening.

Straight ahead to Shaddadi.

That's the road to Shaddad.

Hopefully everybody's looking for a fight

because I'm very optimistic we're all gonna get that fight.

- Hell, yeah.

Get some!

[gunfire] - Somebody's shooting.

Hear that?

- We took a little bit of contact

throughout the night until daybreak.

The fighting did die down pretty quick.

I wonder if they pulled over here trying to get cover.

Two more Daesh caught a severe case of death.

I think there were six guys all together in this village,

but for the most part they're pulling back.

They're not gonna send their good fighters here

to die in these villages.

They're all digging in in Shaddad.

Until then, we're just pushing village to village.

Of course I'm enjoying the movement,

and it seems as if we're getting closer to the fight.

I'm clear.

- Going through more paperwork.

- Records.

- No, no money. - Take that. Take that.

Just bring the entire thing, dude.

- We found loads and loads of lists.

Lists of members, lists of people

who have contributed monetarily to Daesh.

- Korean money, Chinese money, European money, Iraqi money.

- I know that there are Norwegians that's come down here

to fight with the Daesh against us,

but it's strange to see

that they have been probably in the same locations as I have.

Some of those dead guys in the street over there

might have been one of them.

Advancing through this oil supply depot,

we came to this Daesh compound.

We're the first people here.

You can only imagine what's been going on in this cage.

They have rubber gloves in here, gas masks.

- It's in Cyrillic and Russian,

but it says... [speaking foreign language].

This is everything you need to create sarin gas,

one of the most dangerous and toxic nerve gasses in the world.

It's pretty clear that Daesh have chemical weapons.