Mingling with a group of fighters from the Syrian Kurdish YPG near the front line with Islamic State (IS) in north-east Syria, the one they call Sipan, with a stubbly beard and dressed in the same combat fatigues, does not look like the odd one out.

But he is. When he speaks, it is English with a southern US drawl. Sipan's real name is Jeremy, and he is from Mississippi.

He has only been here a month, but already calls it his "home from home".

Jeremy Woodard is one of a tiny handful of American ex-servicemen who have made their way halfway round the world to join the battle against IS.

He lost everything he brought with him when his position at Jezaa was overrun by the militants, who held it for three days before being pushed back. He says he killed two of them.

"That doesn't make me feel like a bad person," he says.

"They kill innocent people daily. They rape women and children and sell them into slavery. Killing an Isis [Islamic State] member, to me that's doing a good deed to the world. All of them need to get wiped out.

"You can't talk to people like that. There's no reasoning at all. There's a war and we have to eliminate them."

'Good guys v bad guys'

Like the other American volunteers - who are not in one unit but scattered on different fronts over a wide area - Sipan followed the Syrian war on the internet and Facebook, and got in touch through social media.

He followed the trail blazed by Zagros, aka Brian Wilson from Ohio, who established contact with Kurdish go-betweens and made his way here via Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan a month earlier.

Brian is serving on another front, at Ras al-Ain, on the far west side of this large pocket in north-east Syria controlled by the YPG militia and its political parent the PYD, an offshoot of the Turkish PKK party of Abdullah Ocalan, whose picture is everywhere here.

"Some of the guys here speak a little English and they're teaching me Kurdish," Brian told me.

"I wanted to come and help the YPG fight Isis. It's not political. For me, it's simple: Isis are the bad guys, these are the good guys. The YPG aren't out to take anybody else's territory. They're just defending their own homes."

Like Sipan, Brian says he will probably stay a long time, though he has two children - 14 and 10 - with his ex-wife back in Ohio.

When we saw him, he had just come back from the funeral of a fallen comrade.

"The kids probably wouldn't understand if it happened to me," he said. "In fact, a lot of people back in the US probably wouldn't understand."

'Noble cause'

Half a day's drive to the east, Jeremy Woodard has already had some close shaves - he had a tooth chipped in a grenade attack - and is well aware of the possibility that he will be killed.

When I asked him what would be his cut-off point for leaving, he said: "My death!" And laughed.

"There's always that possibility," he said. "When I came over here, some people said it's suicide. They could be right, but I don't see it like that.

"I see it as doing a noble, good cause. If I may die, I know I came over here to try to help, so that's what I want."

(BBC)