Several of us here have written about "Doc" Dwyer, the medic who's picture gave a humantarian face to a brutal war, and who's struggles with PTSD ended in death. But it seems that he was a hero even before he left the states. Read more below.
ALLEN G. BREED and KEVIN MAURER, Associated Press Writers, have done a follow-up story, retelling the story of how and why "doc" joined up, and also getting information from the fellow troops that Dwyer served with. You can go to here to read the full story, but I thought I'd pull a couple of paragraphs (hopefully not so many as to cross over fair use - but it is a long article and I have left a great deal out) to provide some additional insight into the kind of person Joseph was.
Like many, Dwyer joined the military in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
His father and three brothers are all cops. One brother, who worked in Lower Manhattan, happened to miss his train that morning and so hadn't been there when the World Trade Center towers collapsed.
Joseph, the second-youngest of six, decided that he wanted to get the people who'd "knocked my towers down."
And he wanted to be a medic. (Dwyer's first real job was as a transporter for a hospital in the golf resort town of Pinehurst, where his parents had moved after retirement.)
The article goes on to describe how Joseph made friends at Ft. Bliss, and what he did for one of them.
Knapp had two young children and was going through a messy divorce. Dwyer stepped in as a surrogate dad, showing up in uniform at her son Justin's kindergarten and coming by the house to assemble toys that Knapp couldn't figure out.
When it became clear that the U.S. would invade Iraq, (Dionne) Knapp (who was going through a difficult divorce, and had young children) became distraught, confiding to Dwyer that she would rather disobey her deployment orders than leave her kids.
Dwyer asked to go in her place. When she protested, he insisted: "Trust me, this is what I want to do. I want to go." After a week of nagging, his superiors relented.
Joseph - like all good soldiers - assured his family that he would be safe and in the rear zone of the war (not likely if you are a medic)
But it wasn't true. Unbeknownst to his family, Dwyer had been attached to the 3rd Infantry's 7th Cavalry Regiment. He was at "the tip of the tip of the spear," in one officer's phrase.
We know the rest - his unit under heavy attack, Joseph rescues a small boy, a picture is taken, and everybody wants to talk to the guy who is very embarrassed by the whole thing.
The article goes on to talk about the now well known stories of his PTSD symptoms and his decent into a living psychological hell. But even in the midst of that, Joseph tried to carry on.
In a telephone interview later that month from what he called the "nut hut" at Beaumont, Dwyer told Newsday that he'd lied on a post-deployment questionnaire that asked whether he'd been disturbed by what he'd seen and done in Iraq. The reason: A PTSD diagnosis could interfere with his plans to seek a police job. Besides, he'd been conditioned to see it as a sign of weakness.
"I'm a soldier," he said. "I suck it up. That's our job."
The sad story and fatal outcome is chronicled in detail, including a very touching story about how one of Ms Knapp's children has responded to the loss of the soldier that used to come to his house, but what I wanted to close with was something that was at the front of the article:
When Dionne Knapp learned of her friend's June 28 death, her first reaction was to be angry at Dwyer. How could he leave his wife and daughter like this? Didn't he know he had friends who cared about him, who wanted to help?
But as time passed, Knapp's anger turned toward the Army.
A photograph taken in the first days of the war had made the medic from New York's Long Island a symbol of the United States' good intentions in the Middle East. When he returned home, he was hailed as a hero.
But for most of the past five years, the 31-year-old soldier had writhed in a private hell, shooting at imaginary enemies and dodging nonexistent roadside bombs, sleeping in a closet bunker and trying desperately to huff away the "demons" in his head. When his personal problems became public, efforts were made to help him, but nothing seemed to work.
This broken, frightened man had once been the embodiment of American might and compassion. If the military couldn't save him, Knapp thought, what hope was there for the thousands suffering in anonymity?
These soldiers are dependent on their service and the VA to try to help them cope with the uncope-able. But as Paul Rieckhoff said:
Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, feels the VA is a lousy dance partner.
Rieckhoff said the VA's is a "passive system" whose arcane rules and regulations make it hard for veterans to find help. And when they do get help, he said, it is often inadequate.
"I consider (Dwyer) a battlefield casualty," he said, "because he was still fighting the war in his head."