Shooting, Rescuing, and Mythologizing Private Lynch

Out of the deadly chaos of invasions and fields of combat, heroes arise to provide narratives of courage and survival. A Davy Crockett, a Sgt. York, an Audie Murphy have traditionally reinforced American values and validated a national mythology. Such has not been the case in more indecisive contests like the Korean War, or more ambiguous, wrongheaded ones like Vietnam. Currently, the post-9/11 War on Terrorism has strained the production of enemies as well as heroes. For, despite the Bush administration’s struggles to put a human face on elusive evil, the Iraqi enterprise often seemed to drift in a miasma of aims and missed opportunities. Along with the “Shock and Awe” pyrotechnics, a human face was desperately needed to emerge from the fog of war. That face turned up on Jessica Lynch.

On April 3, the Washington Post ran a front-page headline, “`She Was Fighting to the Death’; Details Emerging of W.Va. Soldier’s Capture and Rescue.” Pfc. Lynch reportedly “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.” She “continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her.” She “was fighting to the death. She did not want to be taken alive,” and was stabbed when the Iraqis closed in (Michael Getler, “Reporting Private Lynch,” Washington Post, April 20). When her photo played on the covers of Newsweek and People magazines, no one seemed bothered by a patent recycling of the Alamo saga, or that the “facts” were receding into the fog of spin and PR.

However, a BBC documentary that aired May 18, maintained that the “ambush” had occurred because, following a series of miscommunications, her Humvee driver had made a wrong turn into a jackknifed U.S. truck; no gunshots or stabs were discovered; she had been treated kindly by the Iraqi medical staff; and her rescue was a trumped-up Hollywood stunt, performed and filmed after a tip-off that her captors (Fedayeen Saddam militiamen) had departed. Another news source reported that the Iraqi doctor who treated her discounted any wounds and claimed she was given a transfusion with blood donated by his staff (Cox News Service, May 18). These versions of her injuries as accident-incurred have been confirmed by her father who ruled out any entry wounds. The U.S. Government remained silent.

With so many conflicting versions circulating, Pfc. Lynch has become a vehicle weighted down with considerable baggage. She has been reported as unconscious and thus lacking any memory of these various events, raising the minimal question of how her wishes not to be taken alive became known. No doubt, everything will be made clear in due course, though the young soldier

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was noticeably silent about the details upon her homecoming to West Virginia in July.

For the present we may ponder the possible meanings of her apparent construction as a female action-figure. Not another G.I. Jane, which has already been turned into a Demi Moore movie, or a Jane Wayne, as some have noted, but rather a figure more in keeping with the new line of female video warriors. These may be “clever, karate-kicking protagonists controlled by players of either sex. They can also, depending on the player’s ability and the games design, be victims of breathtakingly violent assaults by men with fists, feet, knives or bullets” (The New York Times, May 15). Assuming, then, that Pfc. Lynch is a fantasy-figure created by males for males — as seems to be the case at least in part — she would then be a vehicle for issues of gender transgression and anxieties over castration.

Given, in addition, the recent high incidence of violence against women at West Point and the Air Force Academy (The New York Times, May 22), one may hazard a guess at the sources of the imaginary wounding of the trooper. After targeting her for such aggressive assaults, her comrades-in-arms (Rangers and SEALS) fittingly initiated reparative measures to affect her rescue, also largely but fittingly a fantasy that redistributes the heroics among equally deserving males. To make sure everyone got the message, her rescue was recorded on night-vision cameras, but the final cut was severely edited. Reality or simulacrum, the whole episode forms a fitting specimen of warfare in the new millennium. We know something terribly traumatic happened to Jessica Lynch, like happened to the country of Iraq — we just don’t know what and we don’t know why.

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