Militants forced him to flee Iraq as a teenager, but now the Marine Corps has allowed him to return as an avenging angel.
"America is my home, but Iraq is my homeland," Cpl. Ali J. Mohammed said in a Marine Corps news story. "My biggest motivation right now is to help drive these extremist groups out of my homeland, and being able to do that as a United States Marine is the most rewarding thing I could have asked for."
Mohammed, 23, is serving as a translator with a team of U.S. troops that is helping Iraqi security forces expel the Islamic State terror group from Iraqi soil, the story says. He grew up in Baghdad and speaks a unique dialect of Arabic.
He left Iraq when he was 16 after his family received threats for supporting U.S. forces. His sister had worked as a translator for Marines in Iraq.
"Seeing her work so closely with these Americans, how much she trusted them and seeing how much they wanted to help us made me idealize them as a child," Mohammed said in the story. "It is part of the reason I decided to join the Marine Corps."
Ali is currently assigned to Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Central Command. He ultimately hopes to become a Raider with Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.
"To be able to read, write and speak Arabic is normal to him, and for him to be a U.S. Marine and understand how we operate is just phenomenal," Maj. Ryan Hunt, who leads a team of U.S. advisers in Northern Iraq, said in the news story. "He’s just a pleasure to work with and is a huge asset to this team. He’s had such a positive attitude and is very mature; sometimes I forget he’s only 23 years old."
