MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Jessica Lynch was just 19 when the world first saw her — a broken, blond soldier caught on combat video in Iraq, her face wearing something between a grimace and a grin.
The Army supply clerk was being carried on a stretcher after nine days as a prisoner of war. She had been captured with five others after the 507th Maintenance Company took a wrong turn and came under attack in Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003.
Eleven of her fellow soldiers died.
Lynch had joined the Army at 18 to earn money for college and become a schoolteacher. This week, at 28, she completes that mission.
She’ll spend today finishing her training as a student teacher at the same elementary school she attended in sparsely populated Wirt County. Then, on badly damaged legs and a right foot that still pains her, she’ll walk across a stage Friday evening and get her education degree from West Virginia University at Parkersburg.
“It’s tough to walk, but I look at it as, ‘At least I’m walking,’ ” she says. “At least I have my legs. They may not work. I have no feeling in the left one. But it’s attached, at least. … At least I’m alive.”
Nearly 4,500 Americans died and some 32,000 were wounded during the war in Iraq, winding down this month as the last American troops withdraw.
The first woman lost was Lynch’s friend and fellow soldier, 23-year-old Army Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa of Arizona, killed in the convoy attack.
“Knowing she died right beside me and that could fairly well have been me brings a whole new perspective,” Lynch said. “You’re just thankful for what you’ve been given, even if it’s not what you wanted.”
