Original subtitles

- What did I know about ISIS before I came out here?

I had heard the stories. I knew ISIS was evil.

But you can never really understand the

brutality that they are capable of until

you see it with your own eyes.

[gunshots]

Most people in America

aren't willing or able to come over here.

[explosion]

And for them, I will carry whatever weight I can.

- ISIS, one of the most dangerous terrorist

groups 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 do anything 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.

[speaking foreign language]

- [Bleep] hungry, man.

I think combat changes every man.

On a small scale,

just the camaraderie, the brotherhood you pick up.

Camaraderie is a strong thing

that you don't find in the civilian world

quite like you do being active duty

in the United States Marine Corps.

- Yes. Yes.

- [laughs]

- Maybe that kind of drew me back,

the allure of camaraderie, the combat,

and the chance to make a difference.

The coalition does not have troops

that are fighting ISIS on the front line.

The only way that I can get in a fight

is to embed myself with local forces.

The YPG is the Kurdish militia

located in northern Syria.

The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in the world

without their own nation.

They are the number one driving force against ISIS

in Syria especially.

Unfortunately they're kind of the underdogs

in every battle.

So they accept us as western volunteers

to come fight with them.

Just buy a ticket, boom.

The next thing you know, you're fighting bad guys.

Well, not quite.

We get smuggled by the YPG

in and out of Iraq and Syria.

They know what they're doing.

We just follow their instructions.

Me personally, I fly into the city of Sulaymaniyah.

We meet contacts in the city of Sulaymaniyah.

Sometimes guys will stay in a hotel for a few nights

or they'll be shuffled straight to the safe house.

You might stay there for one or two days.

You may stay for two or three weeks.

There's no telling when the next route is gonna get you in.

I'm not gonna go over any direct routes,

and there is not one direct route.

They take multiple routes obviously

for the safety of our escorts and ourselves.

You're typically going over half a dozen checkpoints.

Some breaths to hold, some fingers to cross,

because if you do get caught,

you will be going to prison in Iraq.

- Checkpoint.

- After that, you'll cross Tigris River.

And arrive on the Syrian side of the border.

Every western volunteer stops at what we call the Academy

where you can expect to spend a month.

- [speaking foreign language]

- Learning their tactics or lack thereof

before you deploy out to the front line.

Mosul and Raqqa

are the two major strongholds of ISIS.

In Syria, the YPG,

They're gonna be the main force

going into Raqqa to help defeat this evil.

My endgame is Raqqa.

When Raqqa falls in Syria,

I can say end of the book.

This battlefield in the Middle East

called out to me personally

being that I have blood, sweat, and tears on that sand before.

As a former United States Marine,

how many of my brothers have lost their lives

fighting these scumbags in Iraq,

and now here they are in Raqqa and Mosul.

- [shouting and screaming]

- They're selling women and children into slavery.

- They're digging mass trenches and murdering.

It's insanity.

Just things that we can't allow to happen on this planet.

And we can stop this if we stand together.

[gunshot]

- No money, no.

No money needed.

Life isn't all about money.

- If the moon were made of barbecue spareribs,

would you eat it?

God knows I sure would.

Then I'd polish it off with a nice tall Budweiser.

[all laugh]

- All the other Western volunteers,

we have one major thing in common,

and that's that we're all on the frontline here together.

So, yeah, by default we're all friends.

Having a guy like Jeremiah on the team-

Someone else with two deployments

and infantry training, I wouldn't want anyone

else but someone like this to watch my back.

[gunshot]

[gunshot]

- That's why we can't have nice things, man.

- [chuckles]

I think I'm gonna open a restaurant when I get back home

where you can shoot over the heads of your guests

while they're eating.

[gunshot]

- Norway, the Norwegian. He's a registered nurse.

So having him around is invaluable.

- [laughs]

- They think I'm backpacking in Asia,

which is... sort of--sort of true.

I'm in Asia, and I have a backpack,

which I walk around a lot with.

I just haven't revealed which country I've gone to.

- I honestly do feel guilty

when I have to look my mother in the eyes

and say I'm returning to war.

She's a complete pacifist

and she just instantly will break down and start crying.

- When he decided to go to Syria,

and I couldn't understand, he said,

"Mom, all it takes for evil to prevail

is for brave men to stand aside and do nothing."

And it just-- it hit me like a brick wall.

He's passionate about what he believes in,

and I believe in him.

- My dad, he gets angry. That's his go-to emotion.

You know, I'd be kind of an asshole to die on 'em.

I'm their only son.

- It's quiet when they're not shooting at us.

Nothing but ducks.

- I need you to stay low, man.

The last thing I need is your blood on my hands.

Jarabulus is a city that's located on the

Turkish border split in half by the Euphrates River.

Just to our west over the Euphrates,

is our neighborhood Daesh.

Daesh is an Arab term for invader.

It's what we call ISIS.

They don't like being called invaders.

They take personal offense to it.

- Civilians or Daesh?

- I don't know. It's hard to tell, man.

You ask a Kurd, they'll tell you 10,000.

Our objective is to ensure that Daesh does not

come over the bridge onto the Kurdish lands.

The were chased over the river about a year ago,

blew the bridge,

and they've been holding Jarabulus since.

When ISIS came, they started steamrolling

through very large cities in the Middle East.

ISIS conquered cities like Fallujah, Mosul, Raqqa,

and they moved in towards Kobane, just east of Jarabulus.

The seige of Kobane was almost similar to

all these cities, except the Kurdish people,

they have this resiliency to them.

And they were able to hold on to Kobane by like

one or two streets.

For the next few months, it was fought tooth and nail.

I mean to the point where you could hear the guy next door

breaking through the wall with a pick-axe trying to get

a hole in the wall so he could throw a grenade in.

At the end of the day, Kurds ended up being able to

hold onto it and push ISIS all the way back to the other

side of the Euphrates, right at Jarabululs.

[gunshots]

Kobane was a very large city.

Now, one quarter of it remains decimated.

In the long and arduous road of defeating ISIS,

we've seen complete destruction in Syria and Iraq.

[crowd chanting]

A lot of these people are children over here fighting.

They don't have the experience we have.

And if I can just teach them one thing or two

that might save their life down the line,

it was well worth the trip out here, man.

But I didn't come here simply to train guys.

I want to be training guys

that I'm gonna be fighting with side by side,

training them in tactics and then leading them into combat.

The way I look at Daesh

is they're kind of like cancer, man.

The only way to treat cancer

is to eradicate every cell of it.

Daesh needs to be treated just the same.

Every last one of these fuckers needs to be killed.

And I'm just waiting for the work.

[music plays]

- I [bleep] love this song.

There's this online help thing I just signed up for.

I thought I'd send this lady some stuff.

Let's see what she thought.

Hello, Shantay. I'm Pete.

I run a series of frontline medical units

stabilizing wounded people coming out of the battle

from Mosul against ISIS.

In this past six months,

I have seen several thousand horrifically injured people

and a few hundred dead ones.

I'm having a hard time

dealing with everything I have seen or been through.

Also, I drink too much.

I smoke more than a pack a day as well.

I'm a former Marine and a child of divorce

and all of that I never really dealt with

before coming out here.

Now it seems to have completely caught up with me.

And then I had to pay my $45

so I could keep talking to her after the first email.

- Mosul is Iraq's second largest city

and has been under ISIL control since 2014.

Iraqi forces have been trying to encircle the city

in advance of a full-scale offensive to recapture it.

[explosion]

[gunshots]

- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[woman screams]

- Okay. All right, we're gonna lift up the leg.

- Yeah.

- Wrap it around a splint.

Right there, perfect.

- Go. Go, go, go, go, go.

Here! Here, here, here.

- Got a six-inch bandage?

I never thought I would be here,

that's for damn sure.

My mom called me one time

and started telling me about this group.

I remember she was like, they're worse than the Taliban.

ISIS.

What a group of assholes.

- Do you think that ISIS

are deliberately targeting civilians?

- [scoffs] Yeah.

They're shooting people with white flags.

They're shooting kids.

Last week we had two kids in a row

that had been shot in the neck or the head by a Daesh sniper

because they were fleeing Mosul.

Not accidental grazing fire or anything like that.

Proper sniper shots, head and neck and face.

They're purposefully trying to kill these people

who are running away.

Ahh.

This is the kind of shit that drives me insane.

There's a family over there

using a perfectly good wheelchair

to transport their luggage.

Hey, stop.

You? Take this.

Let me take this.

Yeah, give it to him.

Carry this.

Yeah.

God damn, dude. Yeah.

Why the fuck am I doing this?

Man.

Nobody sees this many fucked-up kids

and takes this many rounds and mortars

and this level of stress for this long

without being completely fucked up.

[sighs]

It's so much easier to just kill people

than to try and keep them alive.

[gunfire]

- Oh!

[gunshots]

I was with the U.S. Marine Corps

for three-and-a-half years.

- Reloading!

- Did two deployments in Afghanistan,

both in Helmand.

I am Marvelous Man!

[men laugh]

[bleep] you, Taliban!

[men laugh]

I got out and was a little bit lost.

Drank, fought my way

through most of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I ended up talking with one of my friends who was out here,

and the more I talked,

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

I think it's a big hook for combat vets.

They are chasing the dragon.

For me, part of it is just chasing that dragon.

Maybe that's a big part of it.

The sense of purpose, I do like that.

Honk, honk, honk. Humvee's coming in.

10 guys are screaming, "Mr. Pete! Mr. Pete!"

In America, I am a remote EMT.

In the battle for the Mosul, I am a fucking doctor.

That's pretty scary stuff.

If it's pulled off properly,

I'm expecting that the Mosul offensive

will be a pretty great military victory.

But realistically,

this is just gonna be a son of a bitch of a battle.

I think we could be in business for a long time.

- Alright so the headline of this article,

"Millennials want to send troops to fight ISIS,

but don't want to serve.

"In a new survey, 60% of 18 to 29 year olds

"say they support U.S. combat troops to fight ISIS,

"but 62% of those polled

say they would definitely not join the fight."

- PJ and those guys which fought in Iraq

against the same group five, 10 years ago,

and they lost friends fighting them,

and then they look at the news

and see that group they used to fight

has just gotten even bigger and more dangerous.

So for them,

I guess it's like an unfinished business.

- My first month here,

I was given what they call a shiar.

It's basically a bolt gun.

It was just sitting in the armory until I got here.

They asked if any of us knew how to use it,

and I said, yeah, all day, all day,

Give it to me.

They had dozers in plain sight digging trenches.

The first day I brought it out here,

just north of this position...

I killed one Daesh.

He was a Chinese Daesh volunteer,

and blew up a dozer they were operating over there

trying to dig trenches for the assault into Jarabulus.

So it denied them space out here.

It was effective.

I mean, we don't get mortared often.

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

Random Dushka fire,

we got pretty lucky with that.

Whoever runs those Dushka guns over there,

they're not that great.

They typically shoot over the buildings.

We found another jacket right here.

That 14.5.

- We've had a local sniper move in recently.

He's taken a few pot shots.

He's within meters.

His windage has been pretty dead on.

Just he's been shooting about a meter low.

- He goes back and forth, man.

He drives up and down.

His Chinese buddy is probably the one

that I smoked with my 14.5,

so he's probably pissed off.

I had that mannequin set up just as sniper bait.

I wanted to find out if he had an eye scope or not.

It would appear he does

because he took four well-aimed shots at the mannequin.

I never did catch a glimpse of the muzzle flash,

so he's firing from indoors somewhere I'm sure.

ISIS uses snipers as an instrument of terror,

especially in an urban environment

because there's just so many areas

that they can hide themselves in,

and you'll never know where they're firing from.

So we figured we'd do a little recon mission.

- Who volunteers for this shit?

- [Bleep] idiots.

- Patrolling the streets and the surrounding area.

- The last time we came out to this mosque,

they were taking potshots at us from across the river.

They were whizzing by our head.

- It's really just a matter of time

before someone does get hit on post.

- Hey, PJ.

- That white truck just stopped right behind the big hill.

I don't see people outside the vehicle,

so maybe your friends showed up.

- I'm helicoptering my dick at them.

- [chuckles]

- If they did try to take let's say our location on the bridge,

there's a good chance they could overrun us.

I think they think we have more than we do

when it comes to like night vision, which we don't have,

mines, which are minimal.

- Yeah.

- Every house has probably been looted eight times,

ten times over, so it's all--

it's all smashed and--

- I don't know about Mad Max-y.

I would go more for like a zombie apocalypse.

This is a nice militarized little building

with walls around it.

When Daesh came through,

it would seem they set up a camp here.

- I've always tried to put myself in the shoes

of even my enemy.

What draws them to war, as well as me?

- A graveyard.

Daesh does that.

They understand psychological warfare.

They understand propaganda.

They use social media very well, very effectively.

- Daesh is really good at selling this war.

The promise of loot, of young brides,

the promise to go to heaven if you die in battle.

I mean, that's why we're looking at 20,000 volunteers

that joined Daesh from around the world.

Maybe a thousand joined YPG.

We went into the city straight across that bridge.

We were the first to get in and actually recon the city,

and on the way back in, pulled their flag off the bridge.

It raised a lot of morale for the troops

on the lower end of the spectrum,

but some of the command was kind of pissed off

because we didn't tell anybody we were going in there.

I do believe jail time was thrown out there

as a threat if we went back over there again.

- Yeah, baby.

- It's all about the thrill, right?

It's still more attractive to me

than a 9 to 5 in America.

You kinda write your own rules, I guess, over here.

- I did not sleep great.

The neighbors were a little bit loud.

It's like 10 in the morning and Peshmerga

just started shooting tanks out at Daesh.

We're getting geared up

because rounds keep landing over here.

Good morning.

Derek Coleman.

When I first met him,

he wanted to go out and fight

and be with Peshmerga, do things,

and he was more than willing to work towards it.

- I can sleep forever if I want to.

- Derek's not a medic.

He's a really good assistant.

- Is there a roll of regular silk somewhere?

We just work together very, very well.

- Are you getting my baby blues?

- They're not--wait.

- Are they blue or green right now?

- They're not their ultimate blue.

- Oh. - If you were wearing--

- It depends on what I wear.

- If you were wearing the tundra right now,

oh, Lord in heaven,

panties dropping across the world.

- That's right.

We're outside Bashiqa,

which has been under ISIS control for over two years.

- What the Peshmerga are prepping to do

is to come in on one side of Bashiqa,

sweep through

and destroy all the Daesh that are in it.

So we'll move from position to position

with the military as they go.

Someone will get hurt, and they'll drive

whatever vehicle they can take back to us.

We'll stabilize them, we'll stop all the bleeding,

we'll pack out wounds

so they will stay alive until they get to the next place.

- There's help from other countries here,

but they're really far back from the frontline.

I mean, we're talking a 20-minute drive

from where the battle starts.

- So us being in a forward position,

it's critical, and it saves lives.

- This has been a big one we've been trying to prep for,

so today we spent some time reconning areas,

tracking routes,

but then, yeah, we did all that and we found out

that the attack will now take place

on the opposite of the city.

So we don't know much about that side,

and we're really afraid that the condition of the road there

is gonna be a big problem.

- That's what I was told.

The last thing I was told.

[explosion]

From the sounds of the bombing we heard all last night

and all this morning,

there's probably gonna be some injured civilians.

500 people showed up this afternoon in this area.

They're from a village.

It's about a 10-minute walk from here.

Half the village is here right now.

- [cries]

- Man, who's Dad?

All right. Yeah, okay.

She looks like she's got an ear and an eye infection.

[baby cries] Oh, God.

Okay. Okay.

APGAR is good.

[laughs]

She's--she's strong.

There's about another 500 people still in the village.

Apparently there's only four Daesh in there,

so that should put into check

the reality of how terrifying Daesh is.

Four guys are stopping 500 people from leaving.

I mean, it's a 10-minute walk from freedom.

[gunshots]

Hey, how close are the ground troops

to that first village?

There's thousands of Peshmerga pouring in right now.

Thousands.

About 5:30 in the morning they pushed out

into the first of, I think, five villages for the day

through constant mortars, air strikes.

The biggest thing killing Peshmerga

is guys bleeding out.

The problem is if they're all the way up there,

they'll bleed out before they get to us.

This isn't a super great spot.

Bad guys here, armor's moving here, we're here.

[gunshots] - Whoo!

- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

- Go, go, go, go, go!

- Take cover, take cover.

- Yeah!

- Let's go!

- You have people back here.

[honking]

- Stay down.

In the truck!

In the truck! In the truck!

Let's go!

Get in! Get in, get in, get in!

[shouting]

I got three, maybe four in the back.

Two red at least.

Move, move, move!

[gunshots]

- I need trucks here now to take them back.

- All right, take my truck, man.

- What's wrong with you?

- I'm good, man. - Okay.

- I don't think it's accurate.

We're probably missing one or two,

but I would say 10 if I had to guess.

- All right.

- I did three myself.

- But there's--yeah.

- This is a notebook

that keeps track of our wounded and dead.

It's unfortunate, because I had it on me,

so now I've been tasked with keeping track of it.

So like right here, this is nine DOA,

which is "dead on arrival."

One of these is a kid who died after we treated him.

[men shouting]

- Here's one day where we're just checking off KIA.

There's 13 right there.

Or, sorry, 23.

I guess these can kind of remind us

as to what's happening... as the days mold together.

- Car one.

Someone asked me what's better,

a really busy day or a slow day?

Obviously a slow day.

Less people are getting screwed up.

Busy days, you just cram through 40 or 50 or 60 people.

Blood and guts and dead people everywhere.

Slow days, you have just enough time

to start thinking about

all the horrific shit you just saw

and you really think about, like, that last one.

Yeah.

When I tell my family we're over here treating patients,

it's a good way to look at it.

And although I have all these feelings

and I'm upset about things,

it doesn't help anyone at the end of the day.

- I'm not the wreck when he calls, I'm the ear.

He has a lot to say,

and he just needs to talk about it.

That's considerably helpful, so that's what we do.

And then you get off and you worry about him like crazy.

Kind of like war, you know.

When he's in the heat of battle it's one thing,

and then when you're out of it, then it all comes to you,

and it's a huge wash of emotions.

- Idle minds is very bad.

You start dwelling.

Right after coming back in 2008 from Iraq,

I got diagnosed with cancer, and I started going through

chemo and radiation treatments.

Worst pain I ever had experienced,

and every day was just waking up wishing I was dead.

I was taking about 1,000 milligrams

of oxycodone a day just to cope with the pain.

And when I got out the military, I went through rehab.

I've been clean ever since.

Cancer has been completely in remission

for over two years now.

If it comes back,

I'm not gonna go through radiation

and chemotherapy again.

So I came over here.

If I die, I die doing what I love to do.

- Yeah, quite a few. Just recently the Canadian.

He was a personal friend of mine.

I served in Dohuk with him.

He was taken out by a suicide bomber.

He took John out.

It was their first operation, man.

First time they went out,

and it went horribly wrong.

- No, man. No, I'm not scared.

[gunshot] Stay down.

They're shooting at us.

That might be the 15th shot now since we moved in.

I've recovered a couple of the rounds he shoots

and the jackets.

It's a 14.5 millimeter.

Very effective, easy to use,

and in the right hands can do a lot of damage.

- You have that round next to the door.

That's where our squad leader,

he went into the room

and when he came out, the sniper shot at him

and almost took his head off.

- I'm not seeing anything.

Shit.

[gunshot]

- Was it coming from the neighborhood?

Well, let's play with him a little bit.

All right, copy. I'll send.

- He knows where we're firing from now,

so I'll change positions

to get on the other side of that bunker over there,

fire three to five rounds and move from the middle here.

Three to five rounds and move north to that other bunker.

They have a headquarters house that PJ had eyes on

when he went across the river,

and there's a lot of activity out there.

They've got barrels set up out front on the porch.

Right now, we're just waiting on a reply from them.

Come on, fucker.

I see him right now.

He's looking over here.

[gunshots]

Whoo! Yeah, baby.

Talk to me.

Show me some love.

- Once you experience combat, the adrenaline rush

is like nothing you'll experience anywhere.

It's got me hooked, I guess.

- That feeling when you encounter somebody

who wants to take your life, I get off on it.

It makes you feel powerful.

Then it goes one of two ways.

It's a positive power you use for the good of humanity,

volunteering your services so somebody else could live

and somebody else could survive.

Or it corrupts your mind, it poisons your mind.

I could honestly sit here and tell you

I could light an ISIS guy on fire,

sit there and pour gasoline on him myself

and light him ablaze and not think anything of it.

Saying that kind of shit like that,

people look at you a lot different.

I mean, how can you-- you're animalistic.

And, I mean, I can admit that's fucked up

that I say that, but it's true.

I mean, you want the truth, that's what it is.

[heavy metal music]

[men shouting]

- We have no idea how many ISIS are holed up inside of there.

Are you guys aware there is an IED right next to us?

- Yes, we're aware.

- I don't even know what I wanna do with my life still.

There's nothing that I wouldn't do to get back over there.

- This is Army versus Army.

Imagine Stalingrad with GoPros.

- Oh, shit!

Oh, shit, that was awesome!