SOLDIER TELLS HIS ISIL STORY
Carleton Place native takes us to battlefield
Fresh off the plane from northern Iraq, where he’d just spent two months at the front lines of the fight against ISIL, Dillon Hillier sat in his parents’ stone farmhouse near Perth last February talking about the bold things he’d done.
He talked about going into combat alongside Kurdish fighters almost immediately after arriving in Iraq, about the ISIL sniper who missed him by inches and about the menial chores he sometimes had to perform, like buying furniture for the general.
The one question he would not answer was whether he had killed during his time as an international anti-ISIL volunteer. But in a book to be released Tuesday, the 28-year-old Canadian infantry veteran acknowledges that he did.
Nine days after arriving in Iraq, Hillier came under fire from two Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters. Alone, exposed and outnumbered, he shot back, killing them both. He then “stood over the two bearded corpses,” according to the book.
“The Peshmerga credited me with two confirmed and four other probable kills at Tal al-Ward. Whether it was two or six doesn’t really matter. What matters is that there are a few less ISIS fighters because of my actions, and that’s something I’ll be proud of and carry forever.”
The book also reveals that, at the time, Hillier was with a platoon of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization under Canadian law. But he said he left the “murderous band of thugs” at the first opportunity.
Co-authored with his brother Russell, One Soldier: A Canadian Soldier’s Fight Against the Islamic State, is the raw, personal memoir of a Canadian driven by conscience to stand against the inhumanity of terrorism. “I felt it was my duty to fight ISIS,” wrote Hillier, using another common acronym for the terror group.
In an interview this week, Hillier, now working at an investment bank in Toronto, said he was initially hesitant to disclose the killings at Tal al-Ward because he wasn’t sure how people would react. He was also concerned about how Canadian authorities might respond. But he said he was no longer worried.
As for the PKK, he said he was unsure about the possible legal ramifications when he first returned to Canada. But he said all the factions in Iraq were fighting ISIL and even U.S. soldiers shared a base with the PKK. “They may be a terrorist organization on paper but we still support them, the West.”
Hundreds of Western volunteers, many of them military veterans, have joined the fight against ISIL, including about 20 Canadians. But Hillier was the first Canadian veteran to go, and the first to return. None of the Canadians have faced criminal charges, although some have been questioned by the RCMP.
Like the others, Hillier was outraged by the October 2014 killings of two Canadian Forces members in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., and Ottawa. Having grown up near the capital, the attack on Parliament Hill hit close to home.
“It felt like an assault in my own backyard,” he wrote. “I knew I had to do something against these butchers. With my unique set of military skills learned in the Canadian Army, I felt that I was well positioned to help those who could not help themselves.”
After making contact with the Kurdish Peshmerga forces through Facebook, he bought a plane ticket and sent his parents a message telling them to read the National Post for an interview he had given the newspaper before leaving. “This is what I have to do,” he told them.
He landed in northern Iraq on Nov. 17, 2014, and, after discovering the Peshmerga had not yet approved his deployment to the front, he instead contacted the PKK, which took him in — although he soon realized he had made a mistake.
The PKK took away his computer and tried to indoctrinate him into its brand of “militant socialism,” a waste of time considering Hillier was a libertarian, not to mention the son of Conservative Ontario MPP Randy Hillier.
His disdain for the PKK aside, Hillier found himself attracted to a female guerrilla named Zende whom he bedded, breaking the group’s strict celibacy rule. “I’m not sure what was more reckless — some of the things I did under fire while in Iraq, or having sex with a woman of the PKK,” he wrote.
Hillier is candid about the confusion he felt standing over the bodies of the Iraqis he killed, but he is not remorseful. “To be honest, I’m proud that I killed jihadis in Kurdistan,” he wrote. “At some level they were men, just like me, but at the same time they were something entirely different. They belonged to one of the most vile and sadistic groups the world has ever known.”
His dislike of the PKK deepened when he watched members confront a man during a mop-up operation. Thinking he might be a suicide bomber, the Kurds killed him. The screams of his wife and children haunted Hillier.
Having not only witnessed the killing but recorded it with a GoPro camera, Hillier feared for his safety and got hold of his Peshmerga contact, who arrived with heavily armed gunmen to rescue him from the PKK base, he said.
From then on, he was with the Peshmerga, but he said the Canadian government was pressuring the Kurdistan Regional Government to release him from service. Ottawa was apparently afraid ISIL would abduct Hillier and release a video of him in an orange jumpsuit.
Meanwhile, the book reveals that Hillier’s family was harassed by ISIL supporters. Death threats came in the form of emails, tweets, Facebook posts, letters and phone calls. The RCMP got involved and according to Hillier, a man was taken into custody.
But aside from the “atrocious” reader comments posted below CBC’s reports about him, Canadians were mostly supportive, Hillier said, and donated almost $20,000 so he could buy night vision goggles, body armour and medical supplies. He gave the surplus funds to the families of the two soldiers killed in the 2014 terror attacks.
On Jan. 27, 2015, Randy Hillier released a statement saying his son had returned safely from the Middle East. The following week, a Post reporter asked Dillon Hiller the question about whether he had killed anyone in Iraq. As he wrote in the book, “Whenever a soldier is asked if he has killed anyone and he answers that he doesn’t want to talk about it, it means, ‘Yes, I have.’ ”
My platoon pushed on and came to another opening in the western berm. Given what had happened at the last opening, we approached with caution and saw tire tracks rutted into the dirt, leading down the reverse slope. There was a small berm beside the tracks that was just big enough to offer the illusion of safety. A section of men well placed on this reverse slope would be able to wreak havoc and engage the enemy from behind, so our group split into two wings. While the larger group maintained the advance up the main road, my smaller section ventured into the more exposed open ground of the western slope.
It was a good plan, if only you ignored the risks. Being separated took us into dangerous ground, with a heightened risk of being cut off if the attack failed – or, more likely, mistaken as the enemy and taking friendly fire. There had already been a lot of friendly fire that day due to poor communication systems, and I wasn’t confident that it wouldn’t happen again. Nevertheless, we continued picking our way carefully down the western slope, crouching low and manoeuvring for cover as best we could. Everyone sensed our exposed position while on this dangerous ground. It was too much for some of the men, and half of the six-man detachment made a decision to go no farther. I could hardly blame them. Venturing behind the enemy force posed inherent risks, let alone triggerhappy Kurds further up the hill who could easily mistake us for the enemy.
Words were exchanged with the other two Kurds who were prepared to keep going, but nothing would move them, so the three of us continued on our own. It felt strange to be moving downhill when, for the past hour, we had been moving up, but the battle had changed and this rear-flanking movement offered the best chance of getting some more kills.
I broke from some meagre cover to get into a better position and realized my mistake right away. Immediately, the earth started spitting up around me from enemy fire. F--k! I dropped to the ground and spotted the enemy: two ISIS fighters about 140 metres away. I was their target and their bullets struck all around my position, some within inches. For the briefest of moments, fear paralyzed my body and mind. I had been shot at before, but that was as part of a massive charge, where to the enemy I would have been just another anonymous target. Here, I was the lone target and it was personal. These two jihadists wanted my death. I don’t know how long they waited before firing, but they chose their timing correctly and waited until I was at my most exposed and vulnerable, with nothing so much as a divot of earth to hide behind. There was nothing else to do but engage, and thankfully my individual soldiering skills kicked in and I started firing back. It felt like an eternity and a split second all at once, but the exchange was probably no more than twenty seconds.
To my good fortune, the two ISIS fighters were not in a good position, either. They were just as exposed as I was. They didn’t expect to see Kurdish forces this far down the hill and so close to their rear flank, so my appearance was almost as much of a surprise to them as theirs was to me. Luckily, they didn’t have enough time to set up a proper ambush.
I kept firing, feeling the butt of my rifle hammer against my shoulder, hoping for my bullets to make contact before theirs did. It was only a matter of time before someone was killed, and I could feel the odds being dialed up against me as the enemy rounds crept closer. There was no doubt in my mind that my marksmanship was probably superior to the enemy’s, but they had two guns against my one. The two-to-one ratio flashed through my mind and didn’t add up to good odds. Then, suddenly, fate smiled on me like it never has before and probably never will again.
Perhaps their nerves broke from my fire, or maybe they saw something else that threatened their position. I’ll never know for sure why the two ISIS fighters inexplicably rose from the ground. At first, I thought they were going to manoeuvre closer so as to get a better position on me, or set up a crossfire. I knew they might not need to move far for either scenario to come to pass. A few metres in either direction could be enough to provide the right angle to lay down accurate fire, and the thought filled me with a dread that I hadn’t felt before. I waited for the inevitable, but then something happened: they turned and ran. Even now, when I replay the image of the two jihadis beginning to flee, I get emotional because I know that I had avoided imminent death.
I stuffed my heart back down my throat and felt a surge of relief well deep within my body, because the jihadis had made a mistake; their nerves had broken first in this high-stakes game of chicken. I saw their mistake and knew that they were already dead. It’s like I could see with perfect clarity what would happen. The jihadis’ lives ended as I knew they would.
I took deliberate aim at the fighter in the lead and squeezed the trigger, watching as he went down in a heap to the ground. While on the run, the second jihadi turned to fire a wild and ineffective burst from his gun. I remained stoic and calm and lined up the sights on my M16. My finger pulled the trigger again and didn’t stop until I saw the second target crumple. Two confirmed dead. They were my kills, and for better or worse, I’ll always remember their shattered bodies.
Later, I stood over the two bearded corpses and looked down at them. Mere moments before, they had been alive and trying to kill me, but now they were dead. I allowed myself time to wonder what they had thought before I shot and killed them. Maybe they weren’t thinking anything, just reacting to the situation, just like I was. The first jihadi to go down had been hit in the head, and his brain was leaking out of a hole in his skull, which had been torn apart. Unlucky motherf--ker. (I don’t know why, but that was my immediate go-to phrase whenever I saw a dead jihadi.) The second had been pierced through his torso a couple of times. Chechen, Afghan, Arab and African passports are often found among the dead ISIS fighters, but these two corpses were native to the Iraqi land in which they had fallen.
While looking down on the two dead jihadis, I remembered exactly how I had felt when I squeezed the trigger. Should I feel guilty for feeling so good at that very moment? Is there something wrong with me for feeling that this was the best thing that I had ever accomplished? Any answer will sound feeble and glib if spoken by someone who has never had to pull a trigger. But men who have seen combat know the truth: in the mind’s shadows, there is something profoundly intoxicating about having the power over life and death.
There are a lot of strange feelings that go through your body and mind after killing in combat. It’s so hard to explain. Maybe it’s futile to even try, and for good reason. One thing is for sure: you are never again the same person after killing a man. Even if it’s a jihadi savage who had it coming. The Peshmerga credited me with two confirmed and four other probable kills at Tal al-Ward. Whether it was two or six doesn’t really matter. What matters is that there are a few less ISIS fighters because of my actions, and that’s something I’ll be proud of and carry forever.