Sergeant Jason Hubbard, 33, returned home to his parents, Peggy and Jeff Hubbard, in Fresno near here yesterday, the Fresno Bee newspaper reported.

Last Tuesday, Sgt Hubbard saw his 21-year-old brother, Corporal Nathan Hubbard, die in a helicopter crash near Kirkuk in northern Iraq. All 14 soldiers on board were killed.

The two brothers served in the same unit, and Sgt Hubbard was in another helicopter nearby when his brother's Black Hawk helicopter went down.

In 2004, their brother, Marine Lance Cpl Jared Hubbard, 22, was killed by a roadside bomb in Fallujah, Iraq.

Saving Private Ryan, a film by Steven Spielberg, was about a World War II mission to recover a soldier from northern France after all his brothers were killed during the D-Day landings there.

'Art imitates life, and unfortunately sometimes life imitates art,' said an army official, who declined to be named.

The US Army began adopting its 'sole survivor' policy in 1942 after five brothers were killed in a single wartime accident.

Cpl Nathan Hubbard's remains will be flown here some time this week.

The remaining Hubbards were taking his death 'very, very hard', said Clovis police spokesman Janet Stoll-Lee. She said Sgt Jason's father, Mr Jeff Hubbard, is a retired 30-year veteran of the Police Department.

Father Tim Rolen, a priest and family friend, said the Hubbards were struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.

He told the Fresno Bee: '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.'

Jason and Nathan joined the US Army in 2005, a year after Jared's death.

In an interview that year with the Fresno Bee, their mother said she believed Jason, a former policeman, had signed up in part to protect Nathan after not having been able to help Jared.

In the interview, Nathan said: 'There's lots of things popping in my head. Go there and honour (Jared) and maybe a little vengeance pumping through my blood too.

'People are going to be hurt, and people are going to be killed,' he added then. 'That is a reality you have to accept, but not dwell on.'

AFP, Reuters, LAT-WP