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Death casts shadow over photographer’s famous shot

Warren Zinn felt sucker-punched the day he learned that former Pfc. Joe Dwyer had died.

Sitting in his office with the image of the young soldier he had made famous more than five years ago hanging above his desk, Zinn looked at Dwyer’s face and considered the poison-pen emails he received from people he doesn’t know, people who suggested he had contributed to the troubled man’s death.

“The sad thing is that he clearly had a problem coming back from this war and nothing was done about it, or not enough was done,” said Zinn, 30, a former Military Times photographer now a law student at the University of Miami. “I think it’s almost like an indication of the war right now.”

Zinn took the picture of Dwyer on March 25, 2003 near the village of Mishkab more than 60 miles south of Baghdad, as the soldier carried the young boy to safety.

Dwyer, who left the Army after he redeployed and made the news again in 2005 for his run-ins with the law in Texas, died of an apparent overdose at his home in North Carolina on June 29.

Zinn last heard from Dwyer in December 2004 in an email that read, in part:

“When I first got back I didn’t really want to talk about being over there to anyone. Now looking back ... its one of the greatest things I’ve ever done. I hope you feel the same about what have done. I truly believe you played an important role in this war. You told every one’s story,” the email said.

As Zinn re-read the passage he recalled his return to Iraq in July 2003 to meet the child who had been wounded. The child, he said, “couldn’t get medical attention either. He couldn’t walk.”

The picture of Dwyer, Zinn said, “was something I was proud of, it was an accomplishment, it was on the cover of USA Today. Now it’s not so great.

“He became a casualty of war no different than if he had died on the battlefield,” Zinn said.