Ostensibly for the European release, but who knows.
Wikipedia says it was released in January '02, which sounds about right for how European versions of games were late compared to American ones, regardless. The American version was the first one out the door, serendipitously released on September 10th, 2001. The Wikipedia article also mentions that the Japanese version got released as a bundle all the way into '04 not because of 9/11, but because they didn't want to cannibalize sales of Game Boy Wars 3.
Speaking of this series, you could also play as Hetler in the SNES version:
View attachment 3165619
which also makes for an excellent pfp