Soldier returning home after death of second brother in Iraq
A US soldier has been withdrawn from Iraq after his two brothers were killed in action, echoing the Oscar-winning film "Saving Private Ryan", it was reported Friday.
Jason Hubbard, 33, will return to his family's home in northern California after younger brother Nathan, 21, was one of 14 soldiers killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in northern Iraq on Wednesday.
The death came three years after a roadside bombing claimed the life of another sibling, Jared, 22, in Fallujah in 2004, reports said.
Jason was withdrawn under the military's "sole survivor" policy aimed at preventing parents losing all of their children to war.
The case bears a striking similarity to Steven Spielberg's 1998 film about a mission to recover a soldier from northern France after all his brothers are killed during the D-Day landings.
"Art imitates life, and unfortunately sometimes life imitates art," an army official who asked not to be identified told AFP.
Jason Hubbard had been travelling in another helicopter accompanying the Black Hawk chopper which crashed on Wednesday, according to reports.
The two brothers had enlisted together in 2005 following the death of Jared Hubbard, media in Fresno, near the family's hometown of Clovis, northern California, reported.
A priest and family friend, Tim Rolen, said the Hubbard family was struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.
"The word I would not use is destroyed. This is a family with strong ties, strong connections. It won't destroy them, but it will get them about as close as you can get to that," he told the Fresno Bee newspaper.
Bob Keyes, the acting chief of the Clovis Police Department where the Hubbard brothers' father Jeff had worked, said the department was in shock.
"Everybody here knew all the boys, so it's like losing a member of the family," said Keyes.
In a 2005 interview, Nathan Hubbard suggested that he wanted to enlist to avenge the death of his brother Jared.
"There's lots of things popping in my head. Go there and honor him [Jared] and maybe a little vengeance pumping through my blood, too," he said.
Later that year he had signed up along with elder brother Jason, a former policeman. The brothers' mother said she believed Jason had joined to protect his younger brother.
In an interview shortly before his deployment to Iraq, Nathan said he was unfazed by the risk he could be killed.
"People are going to be hurt, and people are going to be killed," he said. That is the reality you have to accept, but not dwell on.
"If I worried about dying ... I would live too cautious, and I want to live a very great life," he said.
The military's "sole survivor policy", which protects servicemen from combat duty if they have already lost family members in military service, was adopted following the deaths of five brothers in a single incident in 1942.
The Sullivan brothers -- George, Frank, Joe, Matt, Al -- all died in the sinking of the USS Juneau after it was struck by a Japanese torpedo following the vicious Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
"Saving Private Ryan" was loosely based on the story of Sergeant Frederick Niland, who was sent home after after two of his brothers were killed and one reported missing and feared dead in 1944.
AFP
