[ WAR IN IRAQ ]
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS
Pfcs. Jessica Lynch, left, and Lori Piestewa posed at Fort Bliss, Texas, the day before their deployment to the Middle East in February. While Lynch was rescued in Nasiriyah, Iraq, when their unit was ambushed, Piestewa was the first American woman to die in the war.
Maui News helps Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the West Virginia soldier rescued from an Iraqi hospital Tuesday, has an all-expenses-paid trip to Maui waiting for her and her family when she recovers from her injuries.
sponsor ex-POW’s
trip to Hawaii
Details of rescueStar-Bulletin staff
The Maui News and its sister newspaper, the Parkersburg News & Sentinel in West Virginia, and supporters in Lynch's home state are sponsoring the trip.
Michael Christman, publisher of the West Virginia newspaper, said it was Jessica's dream to someday visit Hawaii.
The Maui News is "happy to be able to help fulfill her dream," said Pat Saka, publisher of The Maui News.
"As I understand it, there was already a fund for her started in the community there, and the newspaper stepped up to help," Saka said.
"We don't have any details, but we are getting offers from the community on Maui to help welcome her and her family, and we appreciate that."
Lynch is recovering from injuries suffered when an Iraqi force ambushed her maintenance unit and captured her March 23.
She is at the military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where she had a back operation and surgery for other broken bones Thursday and Friday.
The Maui trip will be presented to her and her family when she returns to her home in Palestine, W.Va.
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CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar >> "Jessica Lynch," a U.S. soldier called out. "We are United States soldiers, and we're here to protect you and take you home." Details of POW’s
rescue releasedHer dead comrades include
a single mom, the first U.S.
woman to die in the Iraq warBy Nicole Winfield
Associated PressOn her hospital bed, Pfc. Jessica Lynch peered out from the sheet with which she'd been covering her head in fear.
"I'm an American soldier, too," she replied.
U.S. Central Command released yesterday the dramatic details of Lynch's rescue, as the 19-year-old supply clerk, now safely at a U.S. military hospital in Germany, awaited a meeting with her family.
Lynch's parents, two siblings and a cousin left their West Virginia home yesterday to fly to Germany for the reunion with their daughter. "I can't wait to see her," said her mother, Deadra Lynch.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart, speaking at a briefing in Qatar, said a team of Navy SEALs, Marine commandos, Air Force pilots and Army Rangers carried out the rescue Tuesday in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.
While troops engaged the Iraqis in another part of the city, the rescue team persuaded an Iraqi doctor to lead them to Lynch, Renuart said.
Lynch, who'd been held since a week earlier when her unit was ambushed, had suffered a head wound, an injury to her spine, and fractures to her right arm, both legs, her right foot and ankle. The rescuers quickly evaluated her medical condition, secured her to a stretcher and took her to a waiting helicopter.
"Jessica held up her hand and grabbed the Ranger doctor's hand, and held onto it for the entire time, and said, 'Please don't let anybody leave me,"' Renuart said. "It was clear she knew where she was and didn't want to be left anywhere near the enemy."
Meanwhile, the Iraqi doctor told the team there were remains of other U.S. soldiers nearby, and they were led to a burial site. Because they had not brought shovels, Renuart said, the team dug up the bodies with their hands.
"They wanted to do that very rapidly, so they could race the sun and be off the site before the sun came up," he said. "It's a great testament to the will and desire of coalition forces to bring their own home."
The Americans were also looking for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, commander of southern forces. He is known as Chemical Ali for leading the 1988 campaign against rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq in which thousands died, many in chemical attacks.
Renuart did not shed any new light on how Lynch sustained her wounds -- whether she was injured in captivity or when the 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed March 23.
Eight of the dead soldiers found during the rescue were members of the ambushed unit, Renuart said. The ninth was a soldier from a forward support group of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, he said. All have been transported back to the United States.
The Lynch family got word of the deaths yesterday just before boarding a plane in Charleston, W.Va. The family broke off a news conference after being told that members of their daughter's unit were among the bodies retrieved during the raid.
"I wasn't aware of this. ... Our hearts are really saddened for her other troop members and the other families," Lynch's father, Gregory Lynch Sr., said before choking up.
Lynch's family has said doctors had determined she'd been shot. They found two entry and exit wounds "consistent with low-velocity, small-caliber rounds," her mother has said.
Lynch had a back operation Thursday and surgery for other broken bones Friday, according to the commander of the hospital, Col. David Rubenstein. A friend is at her bedside and although she's still being fed intravenously, she's drawn up a list of her favorite foods for the hospital: turkey, steamed carrots and applesauce.
"Her emotional state is extremely good. She's jovial. She's talking with staff," Rubenstein said.
While the U.S. team was in the hospital, Renuart said, they also found a weapons cache and a large-scale sandbox model depicting U.S. and Iraqi positions in Nasiriyah.
Meanwhile in Tuba City, Ariz., the family of Pfc. Lori Piestewa mourned the death of the first American servicewoman killed in the war.
Both women were members of the 507th, based at Fort Bliss in Texas. Piestewa was in the same unit as Lynch when they were ambushed.
Piestewa (pronounced pee-ESS-tuh-wah) was a member of the Hopi Tribe, whose reservation is near the Navajo Reservation community of Tuba City. She was a 23-year-old single mother raising a 4-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl.
"Our family is proud of her. She is our hero," her brother Wayland said yesterday in a prepared statement to reporters. "We are going to hold that in our hearts. She will not be forgotten."
Piestewa and Lynch were good friends and roommates, said Myra Draper, a friend of the Piestewa family. She recognized Lynch in TV broadcasts because she had seen family photos of the two together.
Piestewa was one of the few American Indian women in the armed forces.
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