[NYT] AUSTIN, Tex. -- Last fall, Patrick Maxwell, a 29-year-old Iraq war veteran now selling real estate in this bustling city, saw something in news footage of Islamic fighters in Iraq that he never saw as an infantry Marine there: the enemy.Lafayette Escadrille Memorial, Villeneuve-l'Étang Imperial Estate, in Marnes-la-Coquette, Hauts-de-Seine, outside of Paris, France, the final work of French architect Alexandre Marcel, 1928
"We patrolled every day, got shot at, mortared, hit by I.E.D.s, one of my friends was killed," said Mr. Maxwell, a former sergeant who deployed in 2006 to Anbar Province. "But I never saw the enemy, never fired a shot."
With the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, hoisting its black flag above many Iraqi cities that United States troops spent years working to secure, he saw a second chance. He connected with a Kurdish military officer online, packed his body armor, some old uniforms and a faded green ball cap with a Texas flag patch on the front, and flew to Iraq.
Within days, he was on the front lines as a volunteer fighter with Kurdish security forces, known as the pesh merga, in northern Iraq, peering through a rifle scope at ISIS fighters as bullets whizzed past.