The real 'Saving Private Ryan': US soldier heads home after both brothers are killed in Iraq

In a tragedy that has echoes of the Hollywood movie Saving Private Ryan, 31-year-old Jason Hubbard was sent home following the death of his brother Nathan, 21, in northern Iraq.

Nathan was among 14 U.S. soldiers killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash on Wednesday.

Their brother Jared, then 22, died in a roadside bomb blast in Iraq three years ago.

Jason, who is married with a twoyearold son, only joined up in 2005 because he felt guilty he wasn't there to help Jared.

Jason and Nathan made a pact that they would serve in tribute to their brother.

Their mother, Peggy, said Jason also wanted to protect Nathan. The two brothers were allowed to serve together under the army 'buddy' system.

Mrs Hubbard, her husband Jeff and their remaining son were said to be taking Nathan's death 'very, very hard'.

Family friend Keith Butterfield said the Hubbards, from Clovis, California,were worried for their sons but proud because they knew they were committed to going to war on behalf of their fallen brother.

"There is nothing anyone can say to make it better, but it's good to know that there are other families that can help you cope," said Mr Butterfield, whose own son died in Iraq last year.

The Pentagon said the helicopter crash was almost certainly caused by mechanical failure and not by hostile fire.

Nathan was part of a group of infantrymen on board for a night mission in Tamim province, which surrounds the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

He was the fifth former student from the same high school to die in Iraq. At the time Nathan and Jason joined up, Nathan said: "We are getting on with our lives.

"My brother - my parents' son - will always be in our hearts, and we'll always remember him and we'll always think of him and all that, but we've got to move on, and that's what we are doing."

Nathan added that they didn't worry about dying in the war. "People are going to be hurt, and people

are going to be killed," he said.

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"That is a reality you have to accept, but not dwell on."

Jason is returning home under the U.S. military's sole survivor policy, brought in after the deaths of the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, who were killed when their ship was sunk in 1942.

Since then, a surviving brother is allowed home if his siblings are killed in combat.

In the Oscar-winning Second World War drama Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks leads a squad charged with finding the only survivor of four brothers and getting him safely back to his family.

The 1998 film, directed by Steven Spielberg, was based, in part, on the true story of Frederick Niland, who was dropped inland as part of an airborne regiment during the Second World War.

He was finally found and sent back to the U.S. after being told that his three brothers had been killed, two in Normandy and one in the Far East.

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The Hubbard family's nightmare was revealed as more fierce fighting erupted between rival militias in Iraq yesterday.

About 200 Al Qaeda terrorists launched a dawn assault on two villages north of Baghdad.

They were repelled by rival Sunni Arab militants but not before they had kidnapped 15 women and children and executed a local imam and three worshippers who they dragged out of a mosque.