Pete and his crew went to work without thinking. Within minutes, an Iraqi Humvee sped into the dusty lot carrying mangled bodies on its hood. The first time I visited the clinic, I was on the way back from reporting with some colleagues. Pete’s clinic was the only medical point anywhere near the fighting, and that small crew was quickly overwhelmed with casualties. Alex and Pete would eventually fell in love. One of my photographer friends, Alex Potter, who had been a nurse in the US, also decided to join in. A few westerners and Iraqis volunteered to help. He quickly set up an operating medical clinic just a short distance from the frontlines. It was a rough start to the offensive, and those early weeks were chaos.Īs the Peshmerga’s role in the offensive ended and the Iraqis took over, Pete changed course. Pete, along with a ragtag group of guys, rolled in alongside the Peshmerga on the first day of the offensive. He felt he had finally found some purpose and was genuinely helping people.Ī few months later, the battle for Mosul started. Pete got a job at a local clinic and then started a medical training program for Kurdish Peshmerga forces. My roommate at the time, Campbell MacDiarmid, took to him quite quickly, and we all became fast friends. ![]() I’d often bump into those types around the region: sometimes at a frontline, but more often than not nursing whiskey at some bar. ![]() Like a handful of other US veterans during those years, Pete had initially tried linking up with one of the many groups fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Pete, Sangar Khaleel, Campbell MacDiarmid, and Fergal Keane outside a clinic in Mosul, Iraq, in 2017.
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