Fact, fiction collide in Lynch saga

First of two parts

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 morning her Army unit was ambushed 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.

Legend in the making

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.

To get a more accurate picture, 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.

Weapon jammed

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.

At times, the 507th was 12 hours behind the main column and frequently out of radio contact.

Lynch was riding in a Humvee when it plowed into a jackknifed U.S. truck. She suffered 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.

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, 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."

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, Texas, 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." No disciplinary action is expected, said the official, who attributed the tragedy to the fog of war.

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.

A series of problems

Other mishaps beside lack of communication contributed to the disaster. 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 decisionmaking."

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.

It was about 6:30 a.m. when they entered the city, 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.

When first entering Nasiriyah around 6:30 a.m., Lynch was riding on a 5-ton truck, officials believe, although they are still uncertain.

The 507th left the city but returned after being confused by the route. 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 noncommissioned 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.

Sitting ducks

As the convoy drove back into central Nasiriyah, it was met by Iraqi forces, some in civilian clothing, 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," a senior military official said of Lynch, or whether she got off any shots at all. "Her weapon jammed severely."

At some point, Lynch's vehicle is believed to have broken 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 center transmission hump.

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 jackknifed. 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.

Catastrophic collision

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.

Sahib Khuder, an 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.

Over the next hours and days, commanders at Central Command, which was running the war from Doha, Qatar, and CIA officers with them at headquarters were bombarded with military "sit reps" and agency Field Information Reports about the ambush, according to intelligence and military sources. The Iraqi reports included information about a female soldier. One said she died in battle. Some said she was wounded by shrapnel. Some said she had been shot in the arm and leg, and stabbed.

These reports were distributed only to generals, intelligence officers and policy-makers in Washington who are cleared to read the most sensitive information the U.S. government possesses.

These intelligence reports, and the one eavesdropped snippet, created the story of the war.

Down a two-lane blacktop rolling through dry farmlands, just a mile or two from the ambush site, lies the Iraqi military hospital of Nasiriyah. It was where Lynch was first treated after her capture.

Today, the three-story structure is a gutted ruin, charred from fires. Mangled brown Iraqi military vehicles fill the parking lot.

On the morning of Lynch's capture, the military hospital was a beehive, with fleeing, fighting and wounded Iraqi troops coming and going as U.S. troops swept into Iraq from Kuwait.

Adnan Mushafafawi, a brigadier in the Iraqi army medical corps, a member of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and the director of the hospital, said a policeman brought in two female U.S. soldiers about 10 a.m.

"They were both unconscious," he said. They were severely wounded, he recalled, exhibiting symptoms of shock and trauma. He read their dog tags: They were Lynch and her friend and Piestewa.

"Miss Lori," Mushafafawi said, "had bruises all over her face. She was bleeding from the eyes. A severe head wound." He said Piestewa died soon after arriving at the hospital.

Did either soldier display evidence she had been stabbed or shot? "No, no," he said. Pressed, he later answered, "Maybe Miss Lori, maybe shot."

Mushafafawi said he and his medical staff cut away Lynch's uniform and threw her clothes on the floor. She lay on a gurney, almost naked, as Iraqi military doctors and nurses worked on her, he said.

Lynch had multiple fractures, Mushafafawi said, and a head injury that he described as minor. He said the staff sutured the wound. She was given blood and intravenous fluids, he said. The staff took X- rays, partly set her fractures and applied splints and plaster casts to them.

"If we had left her without treatment, she would have died," Mushafafawi said.

The military doctor said Lynch briefly regained consciousness at his hospital, but appeared disoriented. "She was very scared," he said. "We reassured her that she would be safe now."

But when Mushafafawi suggested to Lynch that he might attempt to better set her leg fracture, Lynch told him, "No, she didn't want us to do anything more," he recalled.

"She was here two, three hours," the doctor said and then transferred by military ambulance to Nasiriyah's main civilian facility, Saddam Hussein General Hospital across town.

Mushafafawi said he assumed his military hospital probably would be attacked by U.S. forces, who two days later overran the compound. He said that it was his decision to transfer Lynch and that no military or intelligence officers accompanied her. Piestewa's body also was transported to Saddam Hussein hospital.

Mushafafawi said he did not know what happened to Piestewa or Lynch between their capture shortly after 7 a.m. and their appearance at his hospital about three hours later.

Later that day, the Arab news network al-Jazeera broadcast graphic close-up film of bodies, believed to be from Lynch's unit, sprawled on a concrete floor at an undisclosed location. Two of the soldiers appeared to have been shot in the forehead, one between the eyes. A smiling Iraqi moved among the bodies, displaying them for the camera.

Four exhausted and shaken POWs from the 507th were shown in the same newscast giving minimal answers to questions posed by their Iraqi captors who had transported them to Baghdad.

Sunday: The rescue

Contributing: Booth reported from Nasiriyah, interviewing Iraqi doctors and nurses in the hospitals where Lynch was treated, and Iraqi citizens who witnessed elements of the initial capture. Priest and Schmidt reported from Washington, interviewing military and intelligence officials with detailed knowledge of Lynch's capture and rescue, as well as officials close to the Lynch family.

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