Much of the story remains shrouded in mystery, in large part because of official Army secrecy, concerns for Lynch's privacy and her limited memory. Lynch's story is far more complex and different than those initial reports. Hollywood promised to make a movie and the media, too, were hungry for heroes. It was irresistible and cinematic, the maintenance clerk turned woman-warrior from the hollows of West Virginia who just wouldn't quit. It became the story of the war, boosting morale at home and among the troops. "She was fighting to the death," one of the officials was quoted as saying. The intelligence reports from intercepts and Iraqi informants said that Lynch fought fiercely, was stabbed and shot multiple times, and that she killed several of her assailants. officials with access to intelligence reports, described Lynch emptying her M-16 into Iraqi soldiers. Initial news reports, including those in The Washington Post, which cited unnamed U.S. Blond and waiflike, Lynch was taken prisoner and held separately for nine days before a dramatic nighttime rescue from her hospital bed by a covert U.S. Eleven of her fellow soldiers were killed five others were taken captive and later freed. military sources say she is unable - or unwilling - to say much about anything that happened to her between the morning her Army unit was ambushed and when she became fully conscious sometime later at Saddam Hussein General Hospital in Nasiriyah, Iraq.Īs the world would remember, Lynch and her Army maintenance unit were ambushed in southern Iraq on the morning of March 23. Her family says she doesn't remember anything about her capture. But she also appears to suffer from wounds that cannot be seen - and the story of her capture and rescue remains only partly told. Lynch has been in the hospital now for 67 days. Her father, Greg Lynch Sr., wearing a fresh T-shirt each day with a yellow ribbon pinned to his chest, rarely leaves her side, except to sleep at night. But she does so alone, during the lunch hours, when other patients are not admitted. To repair the fractures, a spinal injury and other injuries suffered during her ordeal, the 20-year-old private first class undergoes a daily round of physical therapy. Jessica Lynch, the most famous soldier of the Iraq war, remains in a private room at the end of a hall on an upper floor of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, her door guarded by a military police officer.
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