Two of the men who fought with the US Marine who was killed in the Ukrainian conflict told The Washington Post that he was a volunteer and not a private contractor.
The Cancel's mother had been reported to have said that her son was a private military contractor. He is believed to be the first American to die in the conflict.
According to his teammate, Cancel joined the International Legion of Territory Defense and worked in a team that included four other Americans.
Van Camp told The Post that foreign fighters in the legion were supposed to be paid by the Ukranian government. He claimed that Cancel didn't receive any pay before his death and that he funded his own flight to Poland.
One of Cancel's teammates said that Cancel was a volunteer.
CNN reported that Cancel's mother said that he traveled to Ukraine under a military contracting company. She said he signed up with the company because he was a corrections officer in Tennessee.
According to The Post, Cancel and his squad fought alongside Ukrainian troops in a suburb of Kyiv. Two cities in the country's south that have seen some of the war's fiercest battles are Kherson and Mykoliav.
The Post reported that Van Camp said he and Cancel would spend their downtime burying dead civilians and tidying up homes pillaged by Russian troops.
Van Camp told the outlet that they didn't want people to come home to that.
The Post reported that Cancel's squad declined to comment on where and how he died, or about the status of his remains.
Cancel was court-martialed in 2020 and left the Marines after joining as an infantry rifleman. A person familiar with the matter said that Cancel was court-martialed after bringing a weapon to a base.
The Marine Corps did not respond to the request.
The number of foreign fighters who joined the Ukrainian military is unknown. In early March, a Ukrainian official told CNN that more than 20,000 people from more than 50 countries had joined the country's foreign legion.
Cancel is survived by his wife and son.
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