A DAD grieving the death of his daughter who died aged 26 while fighting ISIS in Syria has revealed her diary entries before she was killed on the battlefield.
Dirk Campbell discovered his child’s war journal after he travelled to the war-torn country to find out about her last days as a female soldier battling the death cult.
Dirk, whose journey to Syria is chronicled in a BBC documentary, was given his daughter Anna’s diary when he met her comrades.
He learned his privately educated child — who died during an air raid by Turkish warplanes — led an extraordinary life as a freedom fighter.
He said: “I have to accept, and we all have to accept, that it was her choice, very much her choice.”
Anna had joined the Internationalists Academy of the YPJ — an all women army fighting not just ISIS, but also Turkey and the tyrannical Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
I want to feel my own strength, to defend myself and my friends
It is has been lauded as one of the most effective fighting units in the eight year civil war that’s killed hundreds of thousands.
And the reality of this conflict is laid bare in the diary of Anna.
In it she says: “Part of me is terrified that I’ll never go back.
“I want to be a part of the fighting.
“I want to feel my own strength, to defend myself and my friends.
“ I watch and read all the news every day, see the martyrs’ photos and the funerals. introspection and reading to do before I become a fighter.”
In one diary entry she describes her training.
She said: "Two women came and showed us how to take apart the AK-47.
"One-by-one, the students took a turn firing at a stack of rocks. When it was my turn I walked over and took a deep breath and fired two shots. Sounds of appreciation erupted behind me.
"It turned out I’d hit the 60-metre target both times. I was pretty chuffed with myself and in the mini-bus on the way back Amara said that I should become a sniper.
"I could easily stay here and help with the building up and the movement of the academy, but my aim is to fight, and I will do so.’
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Dirk says he was shaken by the discovery of the diary.
He said: "I think if I had known that she was facing lethal fire I would not have been able to sleep.
“I would have tried to get there, to be with her. Perhaps I could have stopped her.”
But finding the journal as well as videos has helped him come to terms with her death and what it was for.
Dirk said: “Now that I’ve started reading it, seen her handwriting on the page, the lovely thing for me is that we’re having a conversation, although it’s just a one-way conversation, but I’m listening to her talk in a way that she didn’t feel she could talk to me.”
He says his decision to retrace his daughter’s steps for a poignant BBC documentary was part of a quest to understand why she made the secret 2,500-mile journey to the war that killed her.
"I want to experience what it was like for Anna", Dirk says.
"How was the world seen through her eyes? I want to know what her world was like. It’s what I think about a lot.
"She knew that her life was in danger. And I want to know that my daughter did not die for nothing."
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