A Broken Body, a Broken Story, Pieced Together - Details Reveal Pfc. Lynch -- Still in Hospital after 67 Days -- Suffered Bone-Crushing Injuries in Crash During Ambush
By Dana Priest, William Booth and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, June 17, 2003; Page A01
Jessica Lynch, the most famous soldier of the 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.
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. But she does so alone, during the lunch hours, when other patients are not admitted.
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. Lynch has been in the hospital now for 67 days. Her physical condition remains severe. But she also appears to suffer from wounds that cannot be seen -- and the story of her capture and rescue remains only partly told.
Her family says she doesn't remember anything about her capture. U.S. military sources say she is unable -- or unwilling -- to say much about anything that happened to her between the ambush and when she became fully conscious sometime later at Saddam Hussein General Hospital in Nasiriyah, Iraq.
As the world would remember, Lynch and her Army maintenance unit were ambushed in southern Iraq on the morning of March 23. Eleven of her fellow soldiers were killed; five others were taken captive and later freed. 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. Special Operations unit, Task Force 20.
Initial news reports, including those in The Washington Post, which cited unnamed U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports, described Lynch emptying her M-16 into Iraqi soldiers. 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.
"She was fighting to the death," one of the officials was quoted as saying. "She did not want to be taken alive."
It became the story of the war, boosting morale at home and among the troops. It was irresistible and cinematic, the maintenance clerk turned woman-warrior from the hollows of West Virginia who just wouldn't quit. Hollywood promised to make a movie and the media, too, were hungry for heroes.
Lynch's story is far more complex and different than those initial reports. 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.
The Post's initial coverage attracted widespread criticism because many of the sources were unnamed and because the accounts were soon contradicted by other military officials. In an effort to document more fully what had actually happened to Lynch, The Post interviewed dozens of people, including associates of Lynch's family in West Virginia, Iraqi doctors, nurses and civilian witnesses in Nasiriyah and U.S. intelligence and military officials in Washington, three of whom have knowledge of a weeks-long Army investigation into the matter.
The result is a second, more thorough but inconclusive cut at history. While much more is revealed about her ordeal, most U.S. officials still insisted that their names be withheld from this account.
Lynch tried to fire her weapon, but it jammed, according to military officials familiar with the Army investigation. She did not kill any Iraqis. She was neither shot nor stabbed, they said.
Lynch's unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, was ambushed outside Nasiriyah after taking several wrong turns. Army investigators believe this happened in part because superiors never passed on word that the long 3rd Infantry Division column that the convoy was following had been rerouted. The 507th was 12 hours behind the main column and frequently out of radio contact before it was attacked.
Lynch was riding in a Humvee when it plowed into a jacknifed U.S. truck -- a precarious position that led to major injuries, including multiple fractures and compression to her spine, that knocked her unconscious, military sources said. The collision killed or gravely injured the Humvee's four other passengers.
Two U.S. officials with knowledge of the Army investigation said Lynch was mistreated by her captors. They would not elaborate.
Days later, tipped that Lynch was inside Saddam Hussein General Hospital in Nasiriyah, the CIA, fearing a trap, sent an agent into the facility with a hidden camera to confirm she was there and help draw a blueprint for her rescue, intelligence sources said.
The Special Operations unit's full-scale rescue of the private, while justified given the uncertainty confronting the U.S. forces as they entered the compound, ultimately was proven unnecessary. Iraqi combatants had left the hospital almost a day earlier, leaving Lynch in the hands of doctors and nurses who said they were eager to turn her over to Americans.
Neither the Pentagon nor the White House publicly dispelled the more romanticized initial version of her capture, helping to foster the myth surrounding Lynch and fuel accusations that the Bush administration staged-managed parts of Lynch's story.
Only Lynch is in position to know everything that happened to her -- and she may not ever be able to tell the story.
"The doctors are reasonably sure," said Army spokesman Kiki Bryant, "that she does not know what happened to her."
Falling Behind
On the western outskirts of Nasiriyah, just a few miles from the city's downtown, a middle-aged farmer named Sahib Khudher was worried and outside of his house when a large U.S. convoy -- a dozen or more trucks, trailers, wreckers and Humvees -- passed by on the road heading north at a few hours before dawn, he said. It was March 23, the third day of the war, as U.S. troops poured into Iraq in a modern-day blitz.
The farmer waved at the Americans. "But they did not see me," he said.
A few hours later, trucks mysteriously returned. At first, Khudher thought they might be Iraqi Army members or Republican Guards coming to fight. But he saw that the vehicles were American, and that they were being pursued in a wild, running gun battle with pickup trucks filled with what Khudher assumed were militia from Saddam's Fedayeen and Iraqi irregulars in civilian clothing. They were firing into the U.S. vehicles and at their tires.
"There was shooting, shooting everywhere," Khudher said. "There were accidents, too. Crash sounds. You could see and hear the vehicles hitting each other. And yelling. Screaming. I could hear English."
The 18 Humvees, trailers and tow trucks of Lynch's 507th Maintenance Company were the tail end of the 3rd Infantry Division's 8,000-vehicle convoy snaking its way from Kuwait to Baghdad. A Patriot missile maintenance crew by training, the members of the 507th based at Fort Bliss, Tex., were assigned to keep the Army's war machine moving.
The initial plan called for moving north on "Route Blue," Highway 8, until the southern outskirts of Nasiriyah, according to military officials. Because the city was still teeming with enemy fighters, commanders decided to reroute the column to "Route Jackson," Highway 1, which skirted around the town to the south and west.
But the 507th never got word of the change.
The miscommunication happened, in part, Army investigators believe, because a battalion commander in the 3rd Forward Support Battalion to which it was attached never made sure the 507th had received word of the route change.
"They didn't know about Route Jackson," said one senior military officer briefed on the investigators' findings. "We believe it would have never happened if the proper procedure had been followed."
The unit fell behind as the enormous wrecking tractors and cargo trailers -- equipment to haul other giant Army vehicles and supplies -- tried to adjust to the division's changing pace.
But other mishaps contributed. Long before they reached Nasiriyah, two of the 507th's 5-ton trailers had broken down, forcing the back half of the unit -- 18 vehicles in all -- to fall further behind the lead elements, where the company commander was riding.
Lynch was among the soldiers in that trailing half.
By the time the 507th reached Nasiriyah, some of the unit's soldiers and officers had gone without sleep for 60 hours. As one officer put it, they suffered "a fatigue that adversely affected their decision-making."
A 'Catastrophic' Crash
As they entered the city, the commander of Lynch's company -- a captain whose identity could not be learned -- informed superiors up ahead that they had fallen as many as 12 hours behind. "He was advised the rest of the column has to move on time whether the rest of them get there or not," a defense official familiar with the Army's investigation said.
Navigating through unfamiliar streets, troops jury-rigged antennas to stay in touch with the lead elements of the battalion since their radios had a range of only 10 miles. But the radios didn't always work.
As they entered the city, it was about 6:30 a.m., and few Iraqis were about. Those who were, including soldiers at checkpoints and armed men in SUVs, just waved at the Americans as they drove by, military officials said.
Using a navigational device, the company commander turned the convoy left and, minutes later, came to a T-intersection, where he ordered the vehicles to turn right again. Then the commander decided turn the column of huge, lumbering trailers and tractors around.
They attempted to retrace their route, but missed a turn. Then one of the American vehicles ran out of fuel.
Lynch at this point was riding on a 5-ton truck.
It was 7 a.m., and more Iraqis were appearing on the streets, military officials with knowledge of the Army investigation said. The company commander instructed his troops to lock and load their weapons. Each soldier had 210 rounds of ammunition. The senior non-commissioned officer, Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, took the rear position in the column, while the company commander went up front.
"We have to pick up speed, move faster!" Dowdy began yelling over the radio, according to the defense official, who has read the surviving soldiers' accounts.
As the convoy drove back into central Nasiriyah, it was met by Iraqi forces, some in civilian clothes, who fired at it from on foot, from vehicles and from stationary mortar positions. Soldiers interviewed by investigators said the Iraqis fired AK-47s, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and mortar shells. The Iraqis fired from both sides of the road.
At least one Iraqi T-55 tank appeared, and the Iraqis positioned sandbags, debris and cars to block the convoy's path.
"A very harrowing, very intense" gun battle was how the senior military officer described it. The U.S. troops fired back.
"We don't know how many rounds she got off," the official said of Lynch, or whether she got off any shots at all. "Her weapon jammed severely."
At some point, Lynch's vehicle broke down and she got into Dowdy's soft-top Humvee, which was driven by Pfc. Lori Piestewa, one of Lynch's close friends. They were joined by two other soldiers whose wrecker became disabled. Dowdy pulled them to safety at great risk to himself, the defense official said. They took the seats on either side of Lynch, who sat atop the transmission hump in the middle.
As his soldiers came under fire, Dowdy, now with four soldiers in his Humvee, sped along the road at speeds of 50 mph, encouraging his soldiers "to get into the fight, trying to get vehicles to move and getting soldiers out of one broken-down vehicle and into another," the senior military officer said.
The soldiers in Dowdy's Humvee "had their weapons at the ready and their seat belts off," said the senior officer, who was also briefed on the investigation. "We assume they were firing back."
There were other acts of bravery. One soldier, whose name could not be learned, bolted from his vehicle to try to rescue other soldiers from a disabled vehicle. He took cover behind a berm, not realizing at first that Iraqi soldiers were on the other side in a mortar pit. When he did, he killed a half-dozen of them with his weapons, the defense official said. Soon, though, he was surrounded by a couple of dozen armed Iraqis and is believed to have been killed on the spot.
"He didn't have a chance," said the official.
A U.S. tractor-trailer with a flatbed swerved around an Iraqi dump truck and jack-knifed. As Dowdy's speeding Humvee approached the overturned tractor-trailer, it was hit on the driver's side by a rocket-propelled grenade. The driver, Piestewa, lost control of the Humvee, swerved right and struck the trailer.
The senior defense official described the collision as "catastrophic."
Dowdy, sitting in the passenger seat, was killed instantly. So, probably, were the two soldiers on either side of Lynch. Piestewa and Lynch were seriously injured, according the senior officer's account.
Lynch's arm and legs were crushed by the compression, U.S. military doctors would later conclude. Tiny bone fragments protruded through her skin.
Khuder, the Iraqi farmer, remembered seeing a Humvee crash into a truck. Later, when it was safe to approach the road, he saw "two American women, one dark skinned, one light skinned, pulled from the Humvee. I think the light one was dead. The dark-skinned one was hurt."
Khudher appears to have seen Lynch, who is white, unconscious, taken prisoner, as well as Piestewa, who was Native American, still alive.
In the hours after the ambush, Arabic-speaking interpreters at the National Security Agency, reviewing intercepted Iraqi communications from either hand-held radios or cellular phones, heard references to "an American female soldier with blond hair who was very brave and fought against them," according to a senior military officer who read the top-secret intelligence report when it came in. An intelligence source cited reports from Iraqis at the scene, saying she had fired all her ammunition.
END OF PART ONE |
