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To Dakota’s surprise, it wasn’t the bombing that scared him the most.
A Marine Corps veteran who volunteered to fight in Ukraine has been hiding behind walls as Russian gunfire swept through and heard artillery fire so many times that his slogan, “It’s normal.” it became a joke inside the unit.
What was not normal, he said, was the feeling of fear as he hid and listened as Russian attack helicopters machine-gunned the position his tank-hunting team had just fled. That moment, he said, “was honestly the most restless thing he had ever been.”
Dakota, now in Ohio after seven weeks of fighting abroad, is among the legion of Western volunteers who have taken up arms against Russia. Like others, he spoke on condition that his full name not be revealed, citing concerns for his safety and that of his family and friends.
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In interviews with The Washington Post, foreign fighters from the United States and elsewhere described obvious disparities between how they expected the war to be and what they experienced. They recalled that they had gone to battle poorly equipped and armed, the occasional thrill of blowing up Russian vehicles and feeling broken to return to Ukraine. Some intend to do so. Others saw friends die and decided that was enough.
For several, a turning point came in late April when Willy Joseph Cancel, another 22-year-old Marine Corps veteran, was killed in combat in northwest Mykolaiv, a region he has seen fierce violence as Russian commanders try to expand territorial gains. All the circumstances surrounding Cancel’s death remain a mystery and her body has not been recovered. Attempts to talk to Cancel’s family were unsuccessful.
There are no known U.S. military personnel in Ukraine, and the Biden administration has tried to dissuade U.S. citizens from joining the fight independently, although it is not against the law to do so. . Officials have said the battlefield is complex and dangerous, and that Americans who want to help the Ukrainian cause should try to do so by other means. And while the exact number of Americans who volunteered is unknown, an estimated 4,000 expressed interest after the invasion in late February. Many joined the fight after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a personal call to foreign volunteers to come there and fight.
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Military veterans, in particular, have been drawn to war, emboldened by their combat training, and eager to apply their skills in a conflict that, to many, seems like a good fight against evil.
But the conflict has also attracted Western military veterans who have never been in combat before or who have only experienced asymmetric insurgencies, not this kind of war, with disputed airspace, relentless rocket bombing and swarms of drones with targeting technology. sophisticated thermal.
Dane Miller, a U.S. Army veteran, went to Poland to take on a quieter but more important role: helping to manage the logistics of refugee aid centers and sending crucial supplies to the border in Ukraine. He has also helped volunteer networks review the military records of potential foreign fighters, to assess whether “they have their hands … to face a massive army,” he said. While many do, a common theme is that drag sometimes replaces relevant experience, he noted. He has advised some veterans not to go to Ukraine.
“There is this idea of heroism and it is glorified. I’ll look at your 214 and tell you if you’re ready for it, ”he said, referring to U.S. Army casualty documentation, Form DD 214, which lists the training and certifications done while wearing the ‘uniform.
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In the Navy, Dakota spent four years as an anti-tank missile gunner, according to his service history provided by the Marine Corps. He never saw combat, but spent time in Afghanistan as a contractor, he said.
He suspended his first semester of college in order to fight the Russians, saying a “just outrage” forced him to do so. He arrived in Ukraine a few days after the invasion. Commanders were eager, he said, to take advantage of their knowledge of U.S.-made Javelin armored weapons, thousands of which have been transferred to the Ukrainian military.
The Dakota foreign volunteer cohort was joined by a Ukrainian military unit and taken on a yellow school bus to Kyiv, from where they were sent northwest to a stormed city outside the capital. It was early March. They received anti-tank weapons and Javelin missiles, but no batteries for the launch unit, he said. Without a power supply, the computer would not work.
The houses were on fire, Dakota recalled. His unit gathered for a forest patrol. A commander waved, “All this is Russian.” Artillery covered the area. The Ukrainians and their volunteers dispersed. Some entered the trenches, others entered the houses. An abandoned residence still had a Christmas tree mounted, he recalled. Some Russian troops retreated as fighting intensified and left behind a wounded comrade who cried until nightfall, Dakota said.
By the end of the second night, eight of the 20 volunteers in the Dakota unit had left their posts, he said, including a Navy veteran who appeared to have broken his machine gun with a stone in hopes of passing it through. battle damage. Another faked an injury, he said.
Dakota fought throughout the Kyiv region and was later sent south to help train others to use javelin. On a mission, he said, he was unable to secure a blockade of a Russian tank with a cold thermal signature. Then four men went up to the hull to sit and smoke. His eyes fixed on the warmth of his body. His missile shattered the vehicle, once captured on video.
An American volunteer named Dakota fires a Javelin missile at a Russian tank east of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, in April. (Video: obtained by The Washington Post)
Russian artillery struck its position half an hour later, and the Dakota team retreated under cover of night. About a week later she felt nauseous and nauseous. He was diagnosed with a brain injury related to his proximity to the bombing, he said, and left home in late April. He has been in recovery ever since.
“It’s not over. It’s not done. It’s not over,” he said.
Other volunteers described different frustrations. Pascal, a veteran of the German army, was on a team with Cancel, the American killed in combat in late April. Problems arose during his first mission, he said.
The team suspected that their two-way radios were controlled by Russian forces and had no additional batteries, forcing them to rely on unsecured cell phones and WhatsApp to communicate. Shortly after exchanging plans, his position was attacked by Russian artillery, he said.
Volunteers felt uninformed during many of their missions, not knowing where they were and, vitally, where the Russians were, Pascal said. The day Cancel was assassinated, he said, they fired from a position they believed was Ukrainian but had no radio communication to confirm. Two team members ventured to investigate. Sounds rang out and they never came back, he said.
The rest of the team received heavy fire, including artillery rounds, from the same direction, Pascal said. A crew member was killed in the bombing. Pascal and another volunteer turned their attention to Cancel, who had been hit by shrapnel, he said. They applied tourniquets in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the bleeding. Their bodies were left behind when Pascal and another survivor withdrew.
This was Pascal’s last mission. He later crossed into Poland. Miller, the American volunteer, met him at a bar in Warsaw and noticed how shocked he was. They left and Miller consoled him, using Google Translate to find the right words in German. They hugged.
“From the beginning, we had no chance,” Pascal said in an interview. “I was wondering why I survived and the others didn’t.”
A Ukrainian-born man who is a naturalized American citizen spoke to The Post on the condition that he be identified only by his radio signal: Texas. He recalled how, at the beginning of the war, he saw in flames images of his hometown and left to join the fight two days later.
Texas, which returned home to Houston earlier this month, never served in the military. He works in an office. But it is a quick study, he said, and he was soon teaching the lessons learned from his American colleagues to the Ukrainians he fought with, things like tactical theories to ambush and stay out of sight. of surveillance drones and optics mounted on Russian vehicles.
Texas patrolled killer-hunting teams in southern Ukraine, he said, including a mission where he saw a T-72 tank dug into a berm near Mykolaiv, his tower barely visible from more than two kilometers away away. Texas fired a missile and cut off the tank right next to the turret. A success, but the rest of the team let out a groan. They wanted to see a column of fire propel the tank turret into the air.
“It didn’t explode as we would have liked,” said Texas, whose lessons were documented in an April Wall Street Journal report. “We were a little upset about that.”
Life at home has no sense of purpose and illusion, Texas said. He is immersed in a divorce process, started before leaving for Ukraine, and sometimes listens to friends who update him by texting about his successful tank harvests.
In quiet times, he reflects on what he has learned from the experience, good and bad. He is more relaxed at work and …