very good and caring person," she said. "He signed up to fight for his country. He was originally from New York. When he saw what happened with the towers (in the 9/11 terrorist attacks), he felt like it was something he had to do."
Dwyer, a private first-class medic, became an image of the Iraq war after a picture showing him carrying an injured Iraqi boy away from a fire fight ran on the front page of several newspapers in 2003, just after the invasion of Iraq by coalition forces.
"He was just never the same when he came back, because of all the things he saw," Matina Dwyer said. "He tried to seek treatment, but it didn't work."
According to the police report, Dwyer called a taxi company Saturday to take him to the hospital. When the driver from Southern Pines Transportation arrived, she found him lying on the floor, unable to come to the door.
Southern Pines Transportation then called the Pinehurst Police Department. Officers arrived shortly after 7 p.m. The report says that Dwyer called from inside the house, "Help me, please! I'm dying. Help me. I can't breathe!"
Officers asked Dwyer to come to the door, but he said he couldn't. They asked him if he wanted them to break in. He said, "Yes, please."
They kicked the door down, and paramedics came to his aid. Officers helped lift Dwyer onto the stretcher and were pushing him into the back of the ambulance when one of them noticed that his eyes became "fixated and glassy," the report says.
Paramedics started cardiopulmonary resuscitation as he was loaded into the ambulance. He was pronounced dead at 7:48 p.m.
'At Peace Now'
"We know that Joseph is at peace now," Matina Dwyer said. "He doesn't have to deal with the awful pictures he would see in his mind."
She said that she hoped that her husband's death would bring more attention to post-traumatic stress disorder. There should be more avenues and resources to help soldiers, especially in this area, she said. It's not just the soldiers who suffer, she said -- it's their families too.
"There are so many others suffering from the same thing," she said. "I wish there were a better way to deal with this. He was still a loving and caring person."
Army Times photographer Warren Zinn snapped the picture of Dwyer racing across the battlefield with the frightened Iraqi boy in his arms.
That shot, showing Dwyer in full battle gear, was splashed across the front page of USA Today and other newspapers and on television all over the world. Dwyer instantly became an American icon, a symbol of American fighting men and women in Iraq. Some compared the photo's impact to the World War II picture of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima.
His parents, Patrick and Maureen Dwyer, didn't even know he was in Iraq until his sister called to tell them about the photo. Patrick Dwyer, at the time head of security at Moore Regional Hospital, knew only that his son had deployed to the Gulf region. Patrick Dwyer was a transit policeman in New York City until he retired and he and his wife, Maureen, moved to North Carolina.
Joseph Dwyer didn't set out to be famous when he joined the Army after 9/11. He'd been afraid his brother, a New York City transit policeman like their father, had been killed in the World Trade Center. He'd grown up on Long Island in a family of police officers.
Two brothers were working in New York City law enforcement, and Dwyer had felt certain that one of them had been killed during the 9/11 attacks. It turned out that both brothers were OK, but Joseph Dwyer -- at the time a patient transporter at Moore Regional Hospital -- enlisted, saying he "knew he had to do something."
'Still There in His Mind'
In March 2003, Dwyer -- married just over a month before to the former Matina Brown of Robbins -- was in Iraq serving as an Army Medic with the 7th Cavalry attached to the Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment near the Euphrates River.
It was the first week of the war. All night attacks by fighters hiding among farm houses on either side of a road had finally been suppressed by air support. A father carrying a white flag on a stick told soldiers his family had been caught in the crossfire. As the father brought out his son, Dwyer raced to meet them, took the boy in his arms and began running back toward a mini-hospital other soldiers were setting up. Zinn clicked the shutter as Dwyer, headed toward him, raced past.
Dwyer later said he wished he'd been able to remain an "unknown soldier" -- that the picture really represented all American soldiers.
It was not to be. Television news crews descended on the family home in Pinehurst. His brother Matthew flew to New York with his wife to accept -- on his behalf -- a "Hometown Hero" award from John Walsh. The Army awarded Dwyer the Combat Medical Badge (CMB) for service under enemy fire. It is awarded to those who give medical support to a ground combat arms unit when the unit is engaged in active ground combat -- but only to those medics who serve with infantry under direct fire.
Medics must have been personally present and under fire to be eligible for the CMB. The CMB is considered by soldiers to be the badge with the most prestige, followed by the Expert Infantry Badge (EIB) and Combat Infantry Badge (CIB).
"He never regretted going over there, doing what he did," Matina Dwyer said. "He couldn't actually come home. He was still there in his mind."
Contact Matthew Moriarty at 693-2479 or by e-mail at moriarty@thepilot.com. Contact John Chappell at 783-5841 or by e-mail at jchappell@thepilot.com.
