Walking into War: How a Sea Bright ex-con violated his probation to fight ISIS in Syria

He crossed into Syria by foot under the cover of darkness, unarmed and afraid.

Anthony DelGatto was one of a handful of westerners, led into the mountains by the Kurdish militia fighters he met only a few hours earlier. The group reached some kind of base camp in the mountains, about halfway into the 5-mile hike across the border between Iraq and Syria.

He had walked that far before, but not in the mountains — and certainly not after more than 24 hours of travel from his home in Sea Bright, New Jersey.

More armed fighters emerged silently from the darkness, armed with machine guns and rocket launchers. DelGatto felt his muscles tighten: Are these the good guys?

But the guerrillas greeted DelGatto and the rest of the group with smiles and handshakes. They were the "good guys," the rebels who promised DelGatto they would bring him to the frontlines of the Syrian civil war.

Many at home had told him not to go — the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, even a judge who said DelGatto would violate his probation and risk jail.

"It was just a few days before I was sitting at my house in New Jersey, watching Netflix," DelGatto recalled about his trip into Syria. "Now, I’m on the Iraqi-Syrian border, in the mountains, with these Kurdish guerrilla fighters, with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and belt-fed machine guns.”

“I was totally freaked out."

For two months, Delgatto would be involved in firefights on an almost daily basis, including a few that left him feeling lucky to be alive. The divorced father of two would meet Syrian families who changed his attitudes on the Middle East and its people.

And back in the United States, his trip to the frontlines of Syria would result in an arrest for violating his probation on a felony conviction.

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DelGatto, 39, was one of an estimated 100 westerners that regularly volunteer with the "People's Protection Unit," or "YPG," a Kurdish militia rebelling against the Islamic State as part of the Syrian Civil War. He received no pay for his time in Syria, and spent nearly $3,000 on plane tickets and equipment.

Foreigners taking up arms in conflicts halfway across the world is nothing new, but Princeton University professor Jacob Shapiro said it's become more commonplace in contemporary Middle Eastern conflicts.

"But it’s not like you’re getting grizzled, super-experienced special forces veterans," said Shapiro, who co-chairs the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, a multi-university group that analyzes and researches civil conflicts. "They’re getting these folks who believe in the cause. That’s valuable and, within the group, it makes people seem like there’s solidarity.”

'YOU CAN'T JUST WALK INTO WAR'

DelGatto starts the story the same way, to anyone who will listen: "So what happened was ..."

Some nights, it's the customers at Dive Coastal Bar in Sea Bright, where he spends weekends as a bouncer checking IDs at the door and weekdays cooking in the kitchen. He's a living conversation piece, with full-sleeve tattoos up and down both arms and his clothing choice usually make some reference to his time in Syria: "Tattooed and Deployed" on one shirt, "Infidel" on another, with a big green scarf around his neck.

On a day in late August, it was told to an Asbury Park Press reporter in Dive's back room.

DelGatto had always wanted to join the military, to be the kind of soldier he read about or saw portrayed in movies. He wanted to be in the thick of combat, fighting with a purpose and the sense that the United States was relying on him.

It was the only path for a Brooklyn kid like him, born to parents "with problems" and living mostly in foster homes.

College was never an option. It was the military – or bust.

He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force shortly after his 18th birthday, aiming to be a pararescue jumper, the kind of unit where "elite” is as much a title as an adjective.

One failed hearing test later, he instead wound up in "logistics" – a truck driver stationed in Rhode Island.

“It was a big letdown for me," he said. After basic training, he never even fired a weapon.

When the USS Cole was bombed in a Yemeni harbor in 2000, his unit stayed in Rhode Island. When the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, his unit stayed in Rhode Island.

Every time a new terrorist attack occurred, he'd talk about it with friends and family, usually agreeing that the best solution was to "just bomb them all."

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“I started saying to myself, ‘OK, payback time. Payback time.’ But nothing ever happened,” DelGatto said. "We didn’t deploy. We didn’t go overseas. Nothing. I just wasn’t satisfied with it.”

DelGatto was honorably discharged after two years of active duty and two years in the Air Force National Guard.

Soon after his discharge, though, DelGatto's path was set for him. He was charged with felony assault, conspiracy and weapons offenses after being involved in the attempted robbery of a jewelry store in Newport, Rhode Island.

DelGatto, then just 24 years old, pleaded no contest to the conspiracy charge and was sentenced to 18 years in state prison, according to Rhode Island court records.

He was released on probation after eight years and moved to New Jersey, bouncing around Jersey Shore towns, simply "going on with his life."

But when the U.S. embassy in Benghazi was attacked in 2012, DelGatto found himself with the same itch he had when he was 18 years old. But, this time, he'd find a way to get into combat.

It started with a message to a Facebook group – “U.S. Veterans Fighting ISIS.” A search on Facebook only revealed a single page with that name, administrated by DelGatto populated mostly with pictures of him. It’s not clear if it’s the same account DelGatto communicated with.

You could do that?, he asked himself.

He was given an email address, to which he wrote an emotional message asking to join the fight. He didn't mention his lack of combat experience. He certainly didn't mention his conviction. Instead, he focused on how passionate he was about "fighting ISIS."

“It was like a fantasy. It was like a dream,” he said.

And for 11 months, that’s all it was.

For those 11 months, DelGatto lived his life – working overnights at Stop & Shop, moving in with his girlfriend – while keeping his dream close to the chest.

But last December, an email came. It was DelGatto’s first correspondence with the YPG.

The YPG, pronounced "yip-peh-gay" in Kurmanji, is one of a handful of Kurdish militias based in northern Syria. The group’s missions mostly center around retaking cities under control of the Islamic State – known as “Daesh” to the Kurds. In the United States, the Islamic State is known as "IS," “ISIS” or “ISIL.”

The conditions were made clear: This was not a U.S. military deployment. In fact, it was a volunteer gig – DelGatto wouldn’t be paid for his time in Syria and had to buy his own flights. There was no “home base” for meals and showers. Instead, he'd likely go without clean water for days at a time, food even longer. There was no helicopter to airlift him should he be shot.

And if he was killed? There was a good chance DelGatto’s family wouldn’t see his body for months.

“They wanted us to understand what we were getting ourselves into,” DelGatto said. “The one thing they made clear is you will come into contact with the Islamic State and you will fight.”

Recounting the story to a reporter, DelGatto smiled, raised his arms in the air and said, “yes!”

A State Department official said the United States government "does not support" any U.S. citizen traveling to Syria to engage in armed conflict and actively discourages such activity.

"U.S. citizens who undertake such activity face extreme personal risks, including kidnapping, injury, or death," the official said, quoting a March travel advisory issued by the State Department. "Our ability to provide consular assistance to individuals who are injured or kidnapped, or to the families of individuals who die in the conflict, is extremely limited."

There are currently fewer than 100 westerners fighting alongside the YPG in Syria, one volunteer told the Press.

For the next 60 days, DelGatto prepared. He studied the Syrian civil war as much as he could, reading articles and watching documentaries on Netflix. He spent hundreds on body armor, a ballistic helmet, a gas mask and desert combat boots for the trip.

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When he told his friends about his upcoming trip, they were flabbergasted. Laura Zimmerman, a roommate in Point Pleasant, knew he was passionate about Syria, but didn't think it was possible he could get there.

"I didn’t think it was real. I thought he was kidding," said Zimmerman, 42. "You can’t just walk into war.”

But first, he had to take care of his legal problems. DelGatto was still on probation and, while he was allowed to live in New Jersey, he needed permission to leave the country.

Judges in New Jersey and Rhode Island denied his requests. At his last court hearing, in Rhode Island on Feb. 20, DelGatto again requested permission to leave the country, noting he was traveling to Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, "for humanitarian purposes."

That request was also denied. Nonetheless, he was on a plane six days later, in apparent violation of the terms of his probation.

SEA BRIGHT TO SYRIA

The Press spoke to two volunteers with the YPG, who confirmed the aspects of DelGatto’s story published here. One volunteer met DelGatto in passing. The other served in the same unit and confirmed or clarified aspects of DelGatto’s account.

The Press also looked into videos and photographs provided by DelGatto and verified that they were filmed or taken in Syria. DelGatto showed a reporter his passport with exit and entrance stamps in Iraq.

The Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the FBI, where officials declined to comment on “any active or pending investigations.”

DelGatto spent nearly two days traveling from the Philadelphia Airport to Syria, by way of Madrid, Qatar, Iraq and the walk into Syria.

For his first few weeks in Syria, DelGatto stayed at a YPG “academy” in Derik, getting coached on military tactics and firearms training, as well as learning Kurmaji and Arabic languages, and the history of conflict in the region.

Watch the video below to see how DelGatto was taught to identify an Islamic State fighter.

Like the other westerners, YPG officers gave him a Kurdish name: "Rustem Fist." Americans had a price on their head, they told him.

It was there that DelGatto claims the westerners formed a tight-knit bond. They called themselves "the 50/50," after a line in the film War Dogs: There's a 50 percent chance they live, a 50 percent chance they die.

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One American volunteer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is based in Syria, disputed DelGatto's relationship with the other westerners. "Nobody liked him here. He mostly kept to himself," the volunteer said.

DelGatto was later armed with a Kalashnikov PKM, a machine gun fed by a chain of bullets attached to his waist.

“I loved it. I love things that go bang. Now we’re in a war zone and we’re ready,” DelGatto said.

The YPG had set its sights on the city of Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold in northern Syria. But first, they had to take control of the province of Tabqa – a 70,000-person city downstream on the Euphrates River with a dam that provided power and water to most of Syria.

DelGatto entered Tabqa by boat, crossing the river under the cover of darkness.

What he found on the other side was “complete chaos.” In one building, he saw the bodies of a few dozen YPG fighters, “torn to pieces.” All around, he saw wounded YPG fighters trying to get patched up the best they could. DelGatto loaded bodies onto the same boat he’d used to cross the river.

And that was before sunrise. Just after the sun began to crest over the buildings of Tabqa, a car came for them.

It drove toward them, slowly gaining speed. Within a few seconds, the cries came out in the language he could barely understand. But the tone was clear: That car had explosives in it and a driver that intended to detonate them around as many Kurds – and Americans – as possible.

For the first time, DelGatto pulled the trigger – along with every other YPG fighter in sight. It exploded like a "small atomic bomb," leaving behind a circle of dirt.

“I was excited. I was afraid. Somebody just killed themselves trying to kill me,” DelGatto said. “Everything I ever thought about – serving my country, fighting – became a reality in that moment.”

'AM I GOING TO DIE IN SYRIA?'

The next five weeks were a blur, as members of DelGatto's unit — comprised mostly of the westerners volunteering for the YPG — gradually became accustomed to the distant gunshots and bodies.

A second car bomb attack struck even closer than the first, the driver flying by the YPG fighters just a few seconds after they ducked into an alley. The explosion, a few blocks away, made the ground shake. Islamic State officials were later heard on the radio celebrating about the Americans they'd just killed, unaware that they were alive.

“That was one of the scariest moments. They were celebrating. Someone killed themselves trying to kill me and they were celebrating,” DelGatto said.

He never came face to face with a person he believed he killed. The machine gun the Kurds gave him fired 650 rounds per minute, and he’d routinely spend more than a few minutes laying down fire on an entire building. He'd find dead IS fighters in the rubble and wonder: Was it one of the 500 rounds I laid down that killed these guys?

"All I know is we got the job done,” he said. “There’s no ‘confirmed kill.’”

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It was never hard to justify, he said. It was survival, shooting at “somebody that was trying to kill us.” And he’d try to think of the stories he’d heard about the Islamic State – the sex slaves, the human shields – or what might happen if one of them was in an American city.

Watch the video above to learn how DelGatto came to terms with his actions.

“To me personally, it was how many people I got to save. That was more important,” he said.

Those were the moments that made DelGatto smile. Syrian families would routinely drop to their knees and try to kiss the boots of American soldiers or pose their children with them as if a celebrity were in town.

"I never felt so much love and gratitude for anything I’d ever done in my life here in America," DelGatto said.

But it was a war. And he was a soldier.

DelGatto had a change of mind in an apartment building. His unit cleared the building, so they could set up on the roof and fire on IS targets assigned to them. As they walked down a staircase, they passed a window overlooking the street and surrounding buildings.

Warning: The video below contains explicit language.

The sound echoed – crack-kah! It was a sniper. For the next two days, the Americans were trapped on either side of the staircase, bunkered down in the apartment building. If they tried to move down the stairs, crack-kah! If they poked their head out the window, crack-kah!

It was in the staircase that he felt his attitude change. Sure, he was still fearing for his life – but he wasn’t going to let some faceless terrorist know that.

“You feel that, at any point, there’s a bullet that could smack me in the face and it’s going to be lights out. That could happen at any point," DelGatto said.

Hey, am I going to die in Syria? Is anyone going to know I'm dead, he asked himself. Are my children going to know about what happened to their dad?

"That fear turned to anger,” DelGatto said, more animus for his enemies.

What DelGatto remembers the most are the moments that made him cry: the man whose lower jaw had been destroyed by a gunshot, trying to convince the Americans to take his infant baby to safety; the families walking miles out of Tabqa, carrying everything they owned on their backs.

When he had a chance, DelGatto would make up an excuse – an imaginary room he had to investigate, a patrol he needed to make – and cry, the tears barely visible under his sunglasses.

“If this was in America, we’d want to ask how we could help, if we could do something for them,” DelGatto said. “That doesn’t change just because you’re Syria. Because they’re Syrian. They’re people.”

Watch the video below for more on DelGatto's experience with liberated Syrian families.

COMING HOME, GOING AWAY

Every so often, YPG commanders would show up with trucks that had mobile Wi-Fi connections, where DelGatto would stay in touch with friends or keep up with the news back at home.

In late March, he got word that his ex-wife’s boyfriend had been arrested for beating DelGatto’s 3-year-old twins. They were in the hospital and the man, Englishtown resident Christopher McMillan, was eventually sentenced to seven years in prison for the assault.

DelGatto knew but didn’t want to admit it: He had to come home.

It was during a layover in Frankfurt, Germany, when he was surrounded by modern technology, people who looked like him that spoke English, that DelGatto realized he'd made it.

His first meal back in New Jersey – while he was still dressed like a "mercenary" – was surf-and-turf at Angelica’s in Sea Bright, scarfed down while he figured out his next move. Now, he was back at the Jersey Shore, without a job or home.

That didn’t last long. By the end of the night, he had full-time employment at Dive Coastal Bar, checking IDs at the door and as a line cook in the kitchen. And within a few weeks, Sea Bright Councilman Kevin Birdsall offered him his spare room, a five-minute walk to his job.

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He read about Syria every night and talked about it to anyone who would listen — the Dive customers, the reporters. But his rhetoric had softened: Simply "dropping a bomb" was no longer the answer.

“I made the realization quick that I was totally wrong,” DelGatto said. “I encountered these people, Muslims and soldiers who appreciated and loved America. I didn’t understand it was just the Islamic State’s twisted interpretation of the Quran.”

But there was never a moment of “I made it” or “I’m safe,” DelGatto said. The opposite was true: The longer he stayed in Sea Bright, the more he missed Syria.

Watch the video below for DelGatto's thoughts about waking up in the United States.

He missed the feeling of his Kalashnikov vibrating in his hands. He missed the adrenaline rush that comes with ducking for cover at the sound of explosions in the distance.

And just like the 18-year-old kid who felt destined for combat, he missed the purpose.

Dropping french fries into hot oil and checking driver’s licenses couldn’t hold a candle to combat.

“I felt like I was a good soldier. I feel like I was doing something that I always wanted to experience in my life and it’s just over,” DelGatto said. “And I’m back here now, going from being this soldier fighting terrorists to being here at work, thinking, ‘Hey, I guess I can get some overtime this week.”

On Sept. 13, DelGatto called a Press reporter to set up a photo shoot for a week later.

On Sept. 15, he traveled to Rhode Island and appeared in court for a probation violation. He was arrested and held without bail, pending a hearing on Oct. 4.

“He was denied permission to travel outside the country not once, but twice,” said Amy Kempe, a spokeswoman for the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office.

In hours of interviews with the Press, DelGatto never mentioned the court hearing or probation violation. What he did mention were his plans, which could be upended by his legal woes. Kempe said he could be sentenced for up to 10 years, the remainder left on his probation period.

Over the summer, he got word that four of the westerners he met in Syria had been killed. Now DelGatto wants to go back, so the Islamic State could "pay for what they did."

“I can talk about how I saw the atrocities, seeing civilians killed, all the things that were completely heartbreaking to me,” he said.

“But as far as the clashing and the fighting goes? I loved every second of it. I loved every second of it," he repeats. "If I could be right there tomorrow, I would.”

Mike Davis: 732-643-4223; mdavis@gannettnj.com