Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, a 20-year military veteran who served 14 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before being killed in combat, did not die while carrying out a rescue operation like the Pentagon originally stated. Wheeler’s Delta Force team was actually conducting an assault against an ISIS compound.

Both Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland denied that Wheeler was killed during combat. Carter said that Wheeler’s mission “doesn’t represent us in a combat role,” and Macfarland denied that the Army had any “boots on the ground.”

In truth, Wheeler and his team were training Kurdish commandos to fight ISIS. In a joint raid, the Delta Force team killed 20 ISIS militants in an initial assault while Kurdish forces released hostages. A glimpse of the ensuing mayhem was captured on video by a Kurdish soldier with a camera on his helmet. The firefight was fierce, and Wheeler was critically wounded. He died later, becoming the first confirmed American fatality in Iraq since 2011.