'I'm not going back until the fight is finished'

The 28-year-old food packaging worker from Sturtevant, Wisconsin, is a former U.S. Army soldier who never served overseas. 

But he has been fighting with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) since last September.

After starting his adventure in Syria, the committed Christian is now in Iraq, where he fights against the jihadis of Islamic State wearing a tactical vest scribbled with the words 'Christ is Lord'. 

'I'm not going back until the fight is finished and ISIS is crippled,' Mr Matson told the Associated Press. 

'I decided that if my government wasn't going to do anything to help this country, especially Kurdish people who stood by us for 10 years and helped us out while we were in this country, then I was going to do something.' 

Mr Matson and dozens of other Westerners now fight with the Kurds, spurred on by Kurdish social media campaigners and a sense of duty many feel after Iraq, the target of a decade-long U.S.-led military campaign, collapsed under an Islamic State group offensive within days last summer.

And while U.S. and its coalition allies bomb the extremists from the air, Kurds say they hope more Westerners will join them on the ground to fight.

Foreigners joining other people's wars is nothing new, from the French Foreign Legion to the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. The Kurds, however, turned to the Internet to find its warriors, creating a Facebook page called The Lions Of Rojava with the stated mission of sending 'terrorists to hell and save humanity.' 

The page also frequently features portraits of smiling, beautiful and heavily armed Kurdish female commanders and fighters.

Mr Matson and three other Americans and an Australian national who spoke to the AP all said they arranged joining Kurdish forces through the Facebook page, run by the People's Protection Units, or YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish militia fighting in northern Syria and Iraq. 

They crossed from Turkey into Syria, now in its fourth year of civil war, before later joining a Kurdish offensive sweeping into Iraq to challenge the Islamic State group.

They now are based in Sinjar, where stone homes painted green, pink and yellow have been damaged in fighting, surrounded by sandbags and piles of rubble.

Foreigners like Mr Matson seem drawn to helping Kurds, Yazidis and other minority ethnic groups caught up in the battle and facing possible destruction at the hand of extremists willing to massacre hundreds in propaganda videos.

'How many people were sold into slavery or killed just for being part of a different ethnic group or religion?' he said. 'That's something I am willing to die to defend.'

However, the other Westerners who talked to the AP spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing the reaction of their families, who didn't know where they were, or possible legal troubles if they make it back home.

(dailymail.co.uk)