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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA 'OWN GOALS' IN THE GWOT
How Private Jessica became America's icon by L Donegan 
How Private Jessica became America's icon The teenage soldier's dramatic rescue provided a tale of redemption that has transformed the national mood Lawrence Donegan Sunday April 6, 2003 The Observer In the dreams of America's heartland, this is how war was meant to be; a young soldier's bravery, a glorious US military success and the answered prayers of a devout and devoted community. It will be some weeks before Jessica Lynch, the army private rescued from an Iraqi hospital this week by American Special Forces, returns home to Palestine, West Virginia, but already the locals are planning the party. 'The little brat's caused a big stir in this country,' said her father Gregory Lynch, as he faced banks of television cameras outside the family's white, tin-roofed home. 'As soon as she is capable, we're planning one hell of a shindig.' Palestine's celebration will be the first of many shindigs for Jessica, a teenager whom one cable TV news presenter breathlessly described yesterday as 'the woman who changed the face of this war'. An exaggeration, certainly, but one which says a great deal about mainstream America's attitude towards the Iraqi military campaign in the days and hours before the grainy footage of Jessica being stretchered out of the Saddam hospital in Nasiriyah was shown on national television. After the euphoria of the war's first few days, the Allied military campaign appeared stalled. In place of 'shock and awe' came stories of Iraqi women and children being gunned down at checkpoints and US prisoners of war being paraded in front of cameras by their captors. Cable TV's army of retired generals, normally reliable cheerleaders for Central Command, were striking a critical note, while the tame Pentagon press corps had begun to ask the occasional tough question. Even the stock market had decided that the patriotic bull market was a bust. The Nasiriyah rescue, with its simple yet powerful narrative of American redemption, changed all of that. As the Washington Post's media specialist Howard Kurtz, commenting on the transformation in the national mood, said: 'Goodbye, quagmire.' The US military may have waved goodbye to the quagmire but there is more bloodshed to come. This conflict remains wrought with difficulties for coalition forces. There are no absolute guarantees, except this: when the fighting is finally over 19-year-old Jessica, whose previous brush with fame was the Miss Congeniality award at the Wirt County Fair, will take her place as an American icon. Already, the Governor of West Virginia is preparing to issue the proclamation declaring Jessica Lynch Day. Universities from across the United States have offered free tuition to help her achieve her ambition of becoming a teacher. She can expect invites from the White House and, of course, from Hollywood, where the television producers and movie executives are already circling. 'What can I tell you? Our business works quickly,' says producer Michael Jaffe, who has a history of fashioning television drama from real life stories. 'It's hard not to look at this and say there might be a wonderful and rewarding movie in it.' After the events of the past few days it's hard to disagree, not least because the script has already been honed to perfection by a grateful US heartland for whom the war in Iraq had been threatening to turn into a nightmare. Wirt County is a small rural community in the Appalachian heartlands with a population of less than 5,000 and an unemployment rate touching 20 per cent. It offers little economic hope for the likes of Jessica, who left school with hopes of training as a teacher but without the financial means. Joining the army offered her both money and an escape. 'She's nothing but a wholesome West Virginia country girl,' said Glenda Nelson, a friend of the Lynch family. 'I told her that she needs to get out and see some of the world. I didn't mean Iraq.' After spells in Mexico and Germany, Jessica arrived in Kuwait in February with the US Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company. The unit - which comprises support staff such as mechanics and cooks - entered Iraq in the first day's Allied attack, providing back up for the advancing Third Infantry Division. Jessica's ordeal began on 23 March, day four of the war, when 15 members of the 507th took a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah. The unit was attacked by members of the Saddam Fedayeen, which had been mounting the fiercest Iraqi resistance against American troops. Details of the ambush emerging from the war zone are confused and often contradictory, although it is thought at least two of Jessica's colleagues were killed in the initial exchanges. Five were taken captive and shown on Iraqi television, while another eight were listed as Missing in Action, among them Jessica. 'She was fighting them to the death. She did not want to be taken alive,' said one US military official in Iraq, who described a scene in which the 19-year-old recruit fired her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, killing several enemy soldiers. Initial reports said Jessica had been both shot and stabbed, although these subsequently proved to be inaccurate. However, she did suffered severe injuries to her spine, as well several broken bones - injuries for which she was receiving rudimentary treatment at Saddam hospital when she spotted by an Iraqi lawyer who was there to visit his wife, a nurse. In an account given to American journalists, the lawyer - known only as Mohammed - described how he had first noticed security guards outside the door of a hospital wing, then asked a doctor friend what was going on. The doctor took him to another part of the hospital from where they could see Jessica lying in bed, bandaged and covered in blankets. Standing over her was a Fedayeen commander, who was slapping the American prisoner. 'My heart was cut,' he said. When the lawyer returned the following day, Jessica was in the room alone and he took the chance to go and speak to her. 'I said "good morning". She thought I was a doctor. I said "Don't worry". She smiled.' That brief exchange set off the chain of events that led to the soldier's dramatic rescue. According to Mohammed's account, which has yet to be verified by independent sources, he went in search of some US military personnel, walking six miles out of Nasiriyah before finally meeting up with US Marines who had been trying to secure a road on the eastern side of the city. 'This was very dangerous for me as the American soldiers were shooting everything,' he said, putting his hands in the air to show how he approached the US soldiers. 'What do you want?' one Marine asked. He told them about the American prisoner at the hospital, about some discarded US military uniforms and the presence of the Fedayeen. Twice over the next two days, according to Mohammed's version of events, he revisited the hospital at the request of the Marines, counting the number of Iraqi militia who were guarding what had essentially become a military base, taking note of the hospital's layout and tracing possible rescue routes for US troops. 'I drew them a map. I drew five maps,' he told reporters. Mohammed, his wife and six-year-old daughter left their family home in Nasiriyah last Tuesday night, just hours before the US Navy Special Operations Forces (known as Seals) stormed the city's hospital. It was the first time a US prisoner of war had been recovered from enemy hands since the Second World War. It was also the first piece of good news in days for the US Central Command in Qatar, which might explain why officials called a news conference at 4.30am to announce to a sleepy press corps that a POW had been recovered. But it wasn't until the following day, once Jessica's family had been informed of her rescue, that details of the mission began to emerge. According to US military officials, the Navy Seals came under fire as they landed in the hospital grounds but quickly made their way to the building where she was being held. The now famous video footage, which has been replayed repeatedly on American TV over the past three days, shows four men stretchering Jessica down the hospital steps to the waiting helicopter. 'There was not a firefight inside of the building, but there were firefights outside, both getting in and getting out,' said a spokesman for Central Command. 'But these guys are pros. Any hairy moments that came up they dealt with very quickly.' It was hardly surprising that the US media, which had been gorging on the startling but confused reporting of its 'embedded' reporters, seized on a story which combined human interest with a clear narrative spine. But missing from this tableau of selfless Iraqi co-operation and American military efficiency were the less palatable details of the Nasiriyah rescue mission. During the raid, the Navy Seals seized a member of the Fedayeen militia who led them to 11 bodies, two in the hospital ward and nine in a freshly dug grave. It is now believed that nine of the bodies were those of Private Lynch's colleagues from the 507th Company. The remains have been shipped back to the US for forensic tests. Meanwhile back in Palestine, West Virginia, where church services had been held every morning since Jessica was declared missing in action, the flag-waving celebrations had already begun, with many locals in this fiercely devout Christian community attributing her survival to the power of prayer. 'I think the reason she is still with us is that she is a true angel and that God knows that he wants her with us for some more time,' said family friend Donald Nelson. Rodney Watson, a teacher at the local high school, said that many locals had memories of the 19-year-old soldier as a headstrong young woman. 'If there was one word for Jessica, it is "scrappy". There was never any quit in her.' With hundreds of journalists from across America gathered in the front garden of his tiny mountain home, Gregory Lynch said he wasn't able to believe his daughter was alive until a day after her rescue, when she called from the military hospital in Germany where she had been flown to be treated for her injuries. 'She was in good spirits but she was in pain. she sounded groggy - and hungry. She said she hadn't eaten for eight days,' he said. Jessica's brother, Gregory Jnr, a private who enlisted on the same day as his sister, said one of her first questions was whether or not news of her rescue had made the pages of the local newspaper in Writ county. 'She doesn't know what kind of uproar she's caused right now,' he said after she'd called home a second time. 'She's definitely a hero, whether she realises it or not - not only to our family, but to the whole nation.' |