March 28, 2003
META-MERICA:
Medic made famous in photo enlisted after 9-11 (Robert Hodierne, March 27, 2003, Air Force Times)The war in Iraq is only a week old and one photograph has already become an icon: A young, grimy soldier in full battle gear, a look a deep concern on his face, carrying a wounded Iraqi child to safety.
The photograph has been on newspaper front pages around the world and broadcast on most American television networks. The military brass has mentioned it when briefing the press.
The soldier in the picture, Pfc. Joseph P. Dwyer, 26, is still in the field, about 80 miles outside Baghdad with his outfit in the 3rd Infantry Division. [He was misidentified by a superior in the field and in the original caption.] Until today, he hadn’t a clue that he was famous. His reaction when he found out?
He laughed.
And couldn’t stop laughing. He was both amused by this and embarrassed.
“Really, I was just one of a group of guys. I wasn’t standing out more than anyone else,” he said in a telephone conversation during some rare down time.
Dwyer has lived the past six years in Wagram, N.C., where his parents moved after his father retired as a New York transit policeman. Dwyer grew up in Mt. Sinai on New York’s Long Island. His three older brothers are New York City policeman. One brother lost a partner when the Trade Center towers collapsed.
“I mean everyone lost someone, a lot of good people,” he said. Dwyer was sure that he had lost someone, too; he believed that his brother had been killed. “I thought he was gone.”
But when he talked to him the night of Sept. 11 and learned his brother was safe, “I knew I had to do something.”
Two days later, Dwyer enlisted in the Army to become a medic.
“It was just what I could do at the time,” he said.
An almost perfect metaphor for America: we're attacked; he wants to do something; he ends up saving a child of our enemy. We fight that one day soon an Iraqi version of Pfc. Dwyer may return the favor for another oppressed people somewhere in the world.
MORE:
British troops attempt to rescue civilians under fire (NICOLE WINFIELD, March 28, 2003, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
And, at our sides, thanks to Tony Blair and Ian Duncan Smith, the nation that birthed us and, thanks to John Howard, our Australian brothers.