The haphazard approach to recruitment was the norm, it seemed, for the entire intake and training processes associated with the legion.
Potential recruits made their own way to Poland, from where they were told to head to the western Ukrainian city of Lvov. The candidate legionnaires were then taken to Livorov, a military camp outside Lvov, where they were subjected to a rudimentary selection process that sought to separate those with and without combat experience.
Those with combat experience were issued weapons and ammunition and sent straight to the front, where they were integrated with Ukrainian Territorial Defense Units. Those without were given a rudimentary four-week basic training course.
The first group of "combat tested" legionnaires were sent to Irpin, where they were tasked with conducting a "hasty defense" against a Russian attack.
While the Ukrainians held, the performance of the legion was "uneven," resulting in many of the newly minted legionnaires being unceremoniously released from service and sent home.
The lackluster performance of the legion had become a domestic political issue, prompting the Ukrainian government to halt recruitment due in large part to the lack of weapons and the lack of military experience.
Some legionnaires, however, were asked to stay, including a four-man team led by a veteran U.S. Army combat engineer with two deployments to Afghanistan named Cameron Van Camp.
Willy Joseph Cancel
One of the Americans under Van Camp's charge was a 22-year-old former U.S. Marine named Willy Joseph Cancel.
Cancel had enlisted in the Maines in 2017, where he underwent basic training before being trained as an infantryman. Cancel never saw combat and was given a bad conduct discharge. In 2020 he was given a bad conduct discharge from the Marines after serving five months in jail for disobeying a direct order. Upon being discharged, Cancel got married, had a son, and gained employment as a corrections officer in Tennessee.
For whatever reason, Cancel, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, left his job and his family and, on March 12, at his own expense, flew to Warsaw, Poland, where he met up with Van Camp.
Together the two Americans travelled to Ukraine, where they were sent directly to the front lines in Kiev due to their status as "combat veterans." though Cancel never served in a combat zone.
Embellishment appeared to be the name of the game with the Americans and the legion; according to Van Camp, he and Cancel were sent to Irpin to assist the Ukrainian military in counter-battery and "sniper" operations, even though neither of them had ever been trained in these highly specialized military occupations, something that would have been painfully obvious to anyone involved.
In any event, Van Camp was able to keep his four-man team in the legion following the post-Irpin "purge" and subsequently his unit saw combat in southern Ukraine, fighting in Kherson and Nikolaev. It was here, sometime in late April, that Cancel lost his life; his remains were not recovered from the battlefield.
BREAKING: U.S. citizen Willy Joseph Cancel was killed in Ukraine while fighting alongside Ukrainian troops against invading Russian forces, his family confirms to @ABC News. https://t.co/fLWXAt2tQ0 pic.twitter.com/HaQJ8L6ksH
ABC News (@ABC) April 29, 2022
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