For many US veterans, coming home is the hardest fight, reports Martin Evans from Melville, New York.

THE March 2003 image became one of the most iconic of the US invasion of Iraq: that of a bespectacled American soldier carrying an Iraqi child to safety. The photograph of Joseph Dwyer was used by news outlets around the world.

This 2003 image of Joseph Dwyer carrying a young Iraqi boy to safety had represented a heroic view of the US invasion. Credit:AP

After being lionised by many as the human face of the US effort to rebuild a troubled Iraq, Mr Dwyer brought the battlefield home with him, often grappling violently with delusions he was being hunted by Iraqi killers.

His internal terror became so bad that, in 2005, he shot up his El Paso, Texas, apartment and held police at bay for three hours with a nine-millimetre handgun, believing Iraqis were trying to get in.