There is no question that U.S. Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch suffered serious injuries in Iraq. Lt. Col. Greg Argyrous, who supervised her three-month recovery at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., detailed them in a TV appearance on “The Early Show.” He said Lynch’s injuries included “a fracture of her right upper arm, a fracture of three bones in her back, fracture of her right shoulder blade, two ribs. She fractured her upper and lower left leg, her lower right leg and in addition to multiple fractures in her right foot. She suffered large laceration of her scalp that was repaired in the Iraqi hospital.”

How Lynch suffered those injuries is a story within itself.

“‘She was Fighting to the Death,’” an April 3 “Washington Post” story by Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, was headlined. It began, “Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.”

It continued, “Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained gunshot wounds and watched other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said. The ambush took place after a 507th convoy, supporting the advancing 3rd Infantry Division, took a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah.”

The writers said, “Lynch was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in on her position, the official said, noting that initial intelligence reports indicated that she had been stabbed to death.”

It’s a great story. Unfortunately, that’s all it is—a story.

An Army investigation of the incident, titled “Attack on the 507th Maintenance Company, 23 March 2003, An Nasiriyah, Iraq,” can be found on the Army’s Web site
(http://www.army.mil/features/507thMaintCmpy/AttackOnThe507MaintCmpy.pdf). It provides no evidence that Lynch had either shot an Iraqi soldier, continued to fire at advancing forces until her weapon ran out of ammunition, or that she was ever stabbed or shot. Rather, her injuries were sustained as a result of her vehicle crashing into another unit vehicle that included Shoshana Johnson, the first African-American female POW.

“At about 0720 hours, the 5-ton tractor-trailer, occupied by SPC [Edgar] Hernandez and SPC S. Johnson, came under heavy fire,” the Army report states. “SPC Hernandez tried to avoid hitting an Iraqi truck blocking the road in front of him and lost control of the vehicle, veering to the right and off the road. To their rear, 1SG [Robert] Dowdy, in the HMMWV driven by PFC [Lori] Piestewa, reached [PFC Patrick] Miller’s 5-ton wrecker and ordered him to increase speed and keep moving. The 1SG’s HMMWV was then hit by direct or indirect fire and crashed at a high rate of speed into the rear of the stopped tractor-trailer, still occupied by SPC Hernandez and SPC S. Johnson.

“There were five Soldiers in 1SG Dowdy’s vehicle: 1SG Dowdy, his driver PFC Piestewa, and three Soldiers in the back—PFC [Jessica] Lynch, SGT [George] Buggs and PFC [Edward] Anguiano. 1SG Dowdy was killed on impact. Piestewa survived the crash, but was seriously injured and died in captivity. Lynch was also injured and captured. The circumstances of Buggs’ and Angiano’s deaths remain under investigation.”

Before the Army report was issued, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and, later, the “Times” of London, disclosed that the “Washington Post” had published a hyped account of Lynch’s capture that was at odds with the facts, something the “Post” would acknowledge and correct in subsequent stories.

The paper’s ombudsman, Michael Getler, told Amy Goodman on her “Democracy Now” radio program that, “…the story should not have been presented in what really did look like a propagandistic-type account.”

Speaking with Goodman on that same radio program, Richard Lloyd Perry, a foreign correspondent for the London “Times,” said, “When I was in Nasiriyah, this was a week or so ago, I stayed in the General Hospital, principally that’s the safest place in town, protected by both Iraqis as well as a small number of American Marines.”

Workers interviewed by Perry said, “There was no resistance at the hospital. The Iraqi soldiers and commanders who had been there, had fled several hours before—really the day before, so these special forces didn’t have to fight their way in at all.”

None of this hype was Lynch’s fault; she deserves our prayers and concerns. So does Shoshana Johnson. And that also goes for the families of the 11 soldiers killed in combat that night.

In war, as we’re seeing again, truth becomes the first casualty.