I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story [Hardcover]

Rick Bragg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2003

On March 23, 2003, Private First Class Jessica Lynch was crossing the Iraqi desert with the 507th Maintenance Company when the convoy she was traveling in was ambushed, caught in enemy crossfire. All four soldiers traveling with her died in the attack. Lynch, perhaps the most famous P.O.W. this country has ever known, was taken prisoner and held captive in an Iraqi hospital for nine days. Her rescue galvanized the nation; she became a symbol of victory, of innocence and courage, of heroism; and then, just as quickly, of deceit and manipulation. What never changed, as the nation veered wildly between these extremes of mythmaking, was her story, the events and the experiences of a nineteen-year-old girl caught up in what was and will remain the battle of her life: what she saw, what she felt, what she experienced, what she survived.

I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story is the story this country has hungered for, as told by Lynch herself to Pulitzer Prize–winning author Rick Bragg. In it, she tells what really happened in the ambush; what really happened in the hospital; what really happened, from her perspective, on the night of the rescue. More than this, the collaboration between Lynch and Bragg captures who she is and where she’s from: her childhood in Palestine, West Virginia, a lovely, rugged stretch of land always referred to as the hollow, where she rode horses, played softball, and was crowned Miss Congeniality at the Wirt County Fair the same year the steer she raised took a ribbon. It reveals her relationships with her older brother, Greg Jr., also an enlisted soldier, and her younger sister, Brandi; with her father, Greg Sr., a forty-three-year-old truck driver who has at times worked construction, cut hay, cut firewood, hauled timber, hauled concrete, run a bulldozer, run a backhoe, cleaned houses, and dug graves; and with her mother, Deadra, a city girl from Parkersburg who moved to the hollow and met her future husband when he was eleven and she was nine. And it describes what happened to the Lynch family in the agony of Jessica’s capture and captivity; the terror and disbelief that cascaded through an entire town at the news of her disappearance into enemy hands; the joy of her rescue; and the long work of healing and recovery that lie ahead. Jessica Lynch has won the hearts and minds of Americans. In the hands of Rick Bragg, a renowned chronicler of American lives, her tale is told at last, with grace, and care, and astonishing candor.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Private First Class Jessica Lynch's capture and rescue during the 2003 war in Iraq captured the attention and captivated the emotions of millions of Americans. Accounts of the actual events surrounding Lynch were wildly varied as some took her to be a symbol of American righteousness while others made her out to be a pawn of the US military. But the Lynch that emerges in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg's portrayal is an ordinary young woman caught up in an extraordinary series of events. Bragg, who had the cooperation of Lynch and her family in writing I Am a Soldier, Too intersperses her war story with a detailed portrait of the diminutive kid from Palestine, West Virginia who enlisted to see the world. What's truly remarkable about Lynch is how relatively unremarkable she is. She had a normal working class childhood, did fine in high school, performed capably in basic training, made some good friends, met a guy, and, like thousands of her contemporaries, was sent off to a war zone in the Middle East. But the story takes a sharp turn when her vehicle loses the convoy it was following near Nasiriyah, her four fellow soldiers are killed in the subsequent fighting, and Lynch is badly wounded and taken prisoner. Blacking out for three hours, she awakes in an Iraqi hospital where the tensions of war coupled with a lack of resources and a language and culture barrier make for a harrowing stay even as numerous medical personnel defy their own military to protect her and save her life. Finally, American troops captured Nasiriyah, kicked down the hospital doors (even as hospital workers tried to give them a master key) and airlifted Lynch out. Bragg also tells the story of the blue collar West Virginia town of Palestine and the Lynch family who the world watches, first as Jessica goes missing, then when she is rescued, and finally when she returns amid much fanfare. Bragg keeps the story telling pretty simple, avoiding an analysis of how the story was spun or the politics behind the war itself. In the end, Jessica Lynch is not, by her own insistence, a hero. Rather, she is a soldier with a remarkable story of survival to tell. Thankfully, she has now had the opportunity to tell it herself. --John Moe

Review

“Riveting. . . . The straight story on Lynch’s remarkable ordeal.” --Entertainment Weekly

“Finely wrought. . . . A vivid portrait of a young woman who fled the familiar and fell into a situation beyond her control.” —New York Daily News

“Deftly, respectfully, movingly, Bragg has written Lynch’s story with extraordinary powerÉ. Brave, convincing and wonderfully sweet.” --The Baltimore Sun

“Bragg brilliantly paints a portrait. . . . Lynch’s voice is heard, and through her eyes, we learn the importance of what it means to be an American.” —The Oklahoman

“Rick Bragg . . . deftly separates fact from conjecture. . . . A convincing record . . . a minor miracle.” --Winston Salem Journal

“Bragg is a gifted wordsmith. He crafts wonderful sentences. . . . He writes lovingly and beautifully about the hills of West Virginia where Lynch was born and raised.” --San Francisco Chronicle

“Bragg tells the story as Jessica lived it . . . [and] in the telling, her story illuminates the stories of countless others.” --San Antonio Express-News

“There is probably more truth--sweet, human, undeniable truth--in Rick Bragg’s fine book, I Am A Soldier, Too than we have seen in anything about her experience so far--including the nightly news. For here, captured in Bragg’s distinctive prose, his appreciation of working people and their hardships, Jessica Lynch’s story comes into its full surround as a quintessentially American journey.” --The New Orleans Times-Picayune

“I Am a Soldier, Too does Jessica Lynch’s story justice without contributing to the distortion that has plagued it.” --The Plain Dealer

“A compelling story.” --Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Lyrical. . . . Bragg is a storyteller. . . . He knows how to use palpable detail to put us inside the emotions of his characters.” --Orlando Sentinel

“Bragg . . . gives a cinematic account of the desperate firefight that mortally wounded Lynch’s Army buddy, Lori Piestewa, and 10 others. . . . Lynch’s painful recovery . . . is vividly described.” --The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Lynch is a true hero in the best tradition of a nation that intuitively prefers modest honesty to grandstanding bravado.” --Los Angeles Times

“There is a modesty about Lynch in the book . . . that is at odds with the months-long media ruckus over her ordeal.” --The Wall Street Journal

“A gripping account of the fight that engulfed Lynch and 32 fellow members of the 507th Maintenance Company. . . . This book is a survival narrative, a story of fighting against fear and pain and isolation and trying desperately to sustain hope.” --Houston Chronicle

“Bragg skillfully gives the story depth and immediacy.” --Ft. Worth Star-Telegram


From the Trade Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 207 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (November 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400042577
• ISBN-13: 978-1400042579
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #681,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Likable person, but not much of a story, November 12, 2003

By 

Jean Bennett (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story (Hardcover)

Jessica appears to be a very likable person, honest about her shortcomings as a "brave soldier" she has been portrayed by the "too much in a hurry to learn the truth American media." However, I don't see the story here and feel that readers will waste their money. All they have to do is listen to the TV interviews and they will get the entire story. And, this book certainly does not give any insight into Iraq, which should have been important to the writer and the publisher. (I heard Rick Bragg say that he didn't have "time" to go into Iraq to research for the book. A shocking oversight if the writer is serious about the subject.) There are several other books that are much more compelling and give information most Americans should seek: I highly recommend "Naked in Baghdad" and "Mayada, Daughter of Iraq" over this book. I particularly liked "Mayada, Daughter of Iraq" since the subject of the writer was an Iraqi woman who had been through about everything a human being can live, all under the Saddam regime. I wish every soldier could read it, as it gives a good idea of how treasured freedom is to the Iraqis released from Saddam's mad grip.

28 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Over But The Healing, November 14, 2003

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story (Hardcover)

Rick Bragg says that he often writes about people who step in front of a moving train. That analogy certainly works for his just released book about Jessica Lynch. I can think of no writer more qualified to tell Jessica's story than Bragg. He is a first class journalist, having won the Pulitzer, and comes from a region of the country, rural Alabama, not unlike the West Virginia where Lynch grew up. (Since I grew up in rural East Tennessee, I'll take the temerity to make that judgment.)

Although Bragg had to have written this book quickly, it does not suffer from haste or sloppy writing. Bragg doesn't waste words-- and while I miss his humor, I understand that what he is about here is serious business. His account of the ambush of the now famous ill-fated convoy from the 507th Maintenance Company captures the immediacy and horror of battle. It's as good writing about the awfulness of war as you'll read.

The narrative is slim. That's as it should be. The event in Lynch's life that the world wants to know about is her capture and what happened to her while she was a POW. There is little of that information available and we may know now most of what we'll ever know. Bragg also discusses Lynch's growing up in West Virginia as well as her immediate and extended families. Her appeal is obvious: she is hardly more than a teenager, blonde, green-eyed, fragile and, from everything Bragg says, honest. She is our daugher, sister, cousin, and rightly or wrongly, hers is the face the public most associates with the American soldier in Iraq.

Jessica Lynch does not consider herself a hero. (I'm reminded that Senator John McCain, another famous American POW, said that there was nothing heroic about getting captured by the enemy.) Bragg discusses the initial sainthood bestowed on her by the government and media and the later disillusionment in some circles because she didn't immediately disown the hype and inaccurate information that was fed to the hungry public. They expect this from a twenty year old who has had many of her bones broken and crushed, was suffering from malnutrition (it is the consensus of everybody involved that she would have died shortly if she had not been rescued by U. S. forces) and in her own words "cannot go to the bathroom." As one of her neighbors said, "She was courageous to do what she done in the first place. . . I couldn't have done it. . . How was she going to set the record straight from days of surgery and fleeting consciousness?"

If she is not a hero-- does it matter-- she comes across as a decent, brave young woman. Her best friend was Lori, a Native American, whom Bragg pays tribute to, along with Lynch's other comrades who died in that awful massacre. The Lynch family, along with the Palestine community, are decent, salt-of-the-earth types as well. I bet I could identify most of those dishes the women brought in as the family awaited news of their "baby."
Lots of potato salad and banana pudding. It was heartening to read that Mr. Lynch, Jessica's dad, said that you cannot hate a whole country, particularly since Iraqi doctors apparently gave their own blood to help keep Jessica alive and an Iraqi civilian--Mohammed Odeh-al-Rehaief risked his own life to save hers.

Whatever your feelings are about the rightness and wrongness of the U. S.'s invasion of Iraq, you have to feel empathy for this young woman. Her words "I am an American soldier too" have the ring of poetry and will be long remembered after she has had a chance to get on with her life.

14 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An American Hero--for honesty!, November 14, 2003

By 

Anthony Sanchez (Fredericksburg, va United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story (Hardcover)

I'm giving this book high marks not so much for the story interest, but for the former private's honesty. Here is a person who could easily have been corrupted into following the fictitious story of her plight that was presented by the government, military, and the media. Of course, this is not a book for analyzing these issues of propaganda. That will have to be done in other types of books. I have to wonder if some readers will have a negative reaction to Lynch's story because she tells the truth as she knows it. I can't say that she was a military hero since I believe that such a title should be dispensed to those who have acted above and beyond. Gratefully, she does not try to place that title upon herself. However, I do believe that she is a hero for her honesty.