Dripping Life

My oldest granddaughter is already preparing her classroom for her first job as a teacher. She will be teaching first grade in a rural school district when the semester begins later this month and, as you might guess, our entire family shares her excitement as she begins her career in her chosen field.

Elsewhere in the country, a teacher whose name you may not remember also is preparing for the first day of school. She is 38, and after serving in the U.S. Army, she is now a veteran teacher. Her name is Jessica Lynch.

If her name isn’t familiar, let’s time travel to July 22, 2003, when Lynch, a U.S. Army private and a prisoner-of-war, was rescued from an Iraqi hospital. Her rescue became a cause celebre for the nation.

The story of this 19-yearold supply clerk from a small town in West Virginia, captured by Iraqi forces in March 2003, dominated headlines and nightly news broadcasts across the nation for weeks … until it was learned several critical details of her capture and rescue had been exaggerated by the Army and/or the White House.

Lynch, on her first deployment to Iraq, was part of the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss, Texas.

On March 23, 2003, just days after the U.S. invaded Iraq, Lynch was part of a supply convoy that took a wrong turn and was ambushed by Iraqi forces near Nasiriyah. Eleven American soldiers died and four others, besides Lynch, were captured.

This young soldier from rural West Virginia sustained multiple broken bones and other injuries that occurred when her vehicle crashed during the ambush. She was taken to an Iraqi hospital. On April 1, U.S. Special Forces raided the hospital and rescued Lynch. They also recovered the bodies of eight of her fellow soldiers. Lynch was flown to the military hospital in Ramstein, Germany, for treatment and then referred to Walter Reed Hospital in the U.S., for several weeks and multiple surgeries on her crushed lower limbs.

Back in the States, Lynch received top billing in print and broadcast media, making her an overnight celebrity. In the initial press briefing on April 2, 2003, the Pentagon released a 5-minute video of the rescue, claiming Lynch had sustained stab and bullet wounds, and had been slapped by her captors while on her hospital bed.

Later, however, Lynch attempted to correct the growing myth. Yes, she was badly hurt in the collision of her Humvee with an 18-wheeler, but she also was knocked unconscious when her vehicle crashed and couldn’t remember what happened next. She also denied she had been mistreated by the staff at the Iraqi hospital and emphasized they had put up no resistance to her rescue.

Lynch was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Prisoner of War medals on July 22, 2003. In August 2003, she received a medical honorable discharge from the U.S. Army. In April 2007, Lynch testified before Congress that she had falsely been portrayed as a “little girl Rambo,” and the U.S. military had hyped her story for propaganda reasons.

According to Hollie McKay in her April 29, 2021, article for Coffee or Die Magazine: “For Jessica Lynch, every waking moment serves as a haunting reminder of all she endured as America’s first prisoner of war in the early days of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Each morning begins with pulling on a leg brace. She cannot sit for too long without fiery jabs in the parts of her back that were broken in Iraq. Her left side is still riddled with the strange discomfort of numbness from nerve damage. That is the side where her foot was crushed, and that has ignited a host of complications derived from overcompensating on her right side in any position, from walking to standing or sitting.”

“I try not to complain about the physical issues; there are so many people out there dealing with the same things or worse. I have learned to accept this is who I am, and I am OK with it,” Lynch said in a recent interview with McKay.

Eighteen years after becoming a household name, Lynch recently celebrated her 38th birthday with her daughter, Dakota, now 14. She has taken on an obscure teaching role of a third-grade teacher in her tiny hometown in West Virginia – a culmination of a lifelong dream that began when her kindergarten teacher became a role model. (The two are still in contact.)

“So, when I [retired] from the military, I went back to get my education. And, teaching has been keeping me busy ever since,” Lynch said.

To her students, she is just Ms. Lynch, their beloved teacher and role model. These are the moments when she can forget the war and what happened.

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To my granddaughter, Emma, and every teacher heading back to the classroom, here in Dripping Springs and every rural and metro school district. There, they will help shape the lives, inspire learning and encourage the potential of our next generations – a heart-felt thank you, and all the prayers, wishes and support for a very good year. Each of you is critical to sustaining our democracy and our precious freedoms.