Saving Private Lynch

“She’s alive,” read the note from an Iraqi hospital worker.

Acting on that tip, one of at least two relayed to the CIA and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. special operations units drew up and carried out a bold plan to rescue Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch from captivity at Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah, Iraq, defense officials and reports from the battlefield revealed Wednesday.

The commando raid, carried out Tuesday night in a blaze of gunfire, relied on at least two informants inside the rundown hospital, one of whom led the special operations forces to the room where a frightened, wounded Lynch was being held, U.S. officials said.

Shown in a photograph shortly after her rescue, the 19-year-old West Virginian was smiling wanly, a U.S. flag folded on her chest. She was flown to a U.S. military hospital at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where she was reported to be in stable condition, recovering from injuries said to include broken legs, a broken arm and at least one gunshot wound.

Lynch’s rescue was a triumphant moment for U.S. forces trying to unseat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, although it came with a disturbing downbeat. After Lynch had been taken to a waiting helicopter outside the building, special operations forces found two bodies in the hospital morgue, and dragooned an Iraqi captured at the outset of the operation to lead them to nine others buried outside. At least some are believed to be Americans, possibly members of Lynch’s squad.

The bodies were removed and are being examined to determine their identities, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said.

President Bush learned of the successful rescue operation Tuesday afternoon during his daily afternoon phone call with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. “That’s great,” the president said upon hearing the news.

Lynch, a supply clerk with the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, had been among a group of soldiers that was ambushed near Nasiriyah on March 23. Two have been confirmed dead; five were shown on Iraqi TV as prisoners of war and seven others, plus Lynch, were missing.

Both the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA had sources in the hospital who provided tips about Lynch’s whereabouts, one U.S. intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The agencies “provided some people” to rescue forces to help them get into the hospital and find their way around inside, the official said.

Britain’s Sky Television quoted an Iraqi pharmacist who worked at Saddam Hospital as saying that he treated Lynch for leg injuries, that she wondered if the American army she knew was nearby would save her and that she cried a lot. “Every day I saw her crying about wanting to go home,” he told the network.

The involvement of Iraqi nationals was just one element of what officials described as a complicated and carefully choreographed operation in which U.S. Marines on the perimeter of Nasiriyah launched a noisy midnight attack to create a diversion for the stealth special forces rescue team.

Then, under cover of darkness, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and Marines landed a Black Hawk helicopter in the courtyard of the hospital, shot their way into the building under heavy fire and moved to the room where Lynch lay.

“There was not a firefight inside of the building, I will tell you, but there were firefights outside of the building, getting in and getting out,” said Brooks, deputy director of operations for U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar. He said there were no U.S. casualties in the mission.

Once inside, the U.S. forces grabbed Lynch, strapped her to a stretcher and -- again, under fire -- carted her to the waiting chopper. She was airlifted out while elements of the rescue team remained behind to search the hospital.

The rescue was filmed by a combat camera crew that accompanied the assault team and produced eerie, green-tinted images through a night-vision lens that were seen on television around the world Wednesday. They showed soldiers hustling the stretcher bearing Lynch toward the Black Hawk and freedom.

U.S. officials said the special operations forces found a large stock of ammunition in the hospital, which appears to have served as a base for Iraqi paramilitary fighters in Nasiriyah.

“We found ammunition, mortars, maps, a terrain model and other things that make it very clear that it was being used as a military command post,” Brooks said.

Lynch was being held by Iraqi paramilitaries, Brooks said, but most had fled the hospital before the rescue team arrived.

Little else was known about Lynch’s ordeal. Brooks said it was not clear whether she had been tortured.

One U.S. military official said she was going through “decompression and repatriation” at the German hospital where she is recuperating. He said she was debriefing military investigators and said the information she is giving “may help others who are being held.”

Lynch spoke by phone with her family in Palestine, W.Va., on Wednesday afternoon, Associated Press reported.

“It is absolutely imperative that she go through a state of repatriation and decompression before she repatriates with her family,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “She’s been through a lot and she needs to be able to tell her story. Our experience with POWs is that this is very important for their future mental health.

“They need to be able to walk out with their dignity, their sense of honor and their sense of loyalty to their country intact.”

The military official said that while special operations soldiers, pilots and some other fighters are trained in how to endure being held by hostile forces, Lynch, as a private in a maintenance brigade, would not have received such training, known as Survival, Escape and Evasion.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush was given a hint earlier in the day that a rescue operation might be undertaken, but that the operation was planned and executed by military commanders.

“The president is indeed full of joy for Jessica Lynch and her family,” Fleischer said. “He’s full of pride for the armed forces that carried out this daring rescue operation. He’s also mindful of the fact that we have others who are unaccounted for, who are missing in action, POWs, and those who have lost their lives. The president is focused on all of this.”

Fleischer praised the operation as demonstrating the “heart and soul” of the U.S. military.

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Times staff writers Esther Schrader and Maura Reynolds in Washington contributed to this report.

* (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The remaining POWs * Apache pilots held since copter went down Chief Warrant Officer Ronald D. Young Jr., 26, Lithia Springs, Ga. Chief Warrant Officer David S. Williams, 30, Orlando, Fla. * Five members of 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, held since being ambushed Spc. Edgar Hernandez, 21, Mission, Texas Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, Alamogordo, N.M. Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, El Paso Pfc. Patrick Miller, 23, Park City, Kan. Sgt. James Riley, 31, Pennsauken, N.J. * Missing in action * Army Sgt. Edward J. Anguiano, 24, 3rd Forward Support Battalion. Hometown: Brownsville, Texas

Army Sgt. George Edward Buggs, 31, 3rd Forward Support Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division. Hometown: Barnwell, S.C.

Marine Pfc. Tamario D. Burkett, 21. 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. Hometown: Buffalo, N.Y.

Marine Cpl. Kemaphoom A. Chanawongse, 22, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. Hometown: Waterford, Conn.

Marine Lance Cpl. Donald J. Cline, Jr., 21, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. Hometown: Sparks, Nev.

Army Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, 507th Maintenance Company. Hometown: Cleveland

Army Pvt. Ruben Estrella-Soto, 18, 507th Maintenance Company. Hometown: El Paso

Marine Pvt. Jonathan L. Gifford, 30, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. Hometown: Decatur, Ill.

Marine Pvt. Nolen R. Hutchings, 19, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. Hometown: Boiling Springs, S.C.

Army Spc. James Kiehl, 22, 507th Maintenance Company. Hometown: Comfort, Texas.

Army Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata, 35, 507th Maintenance Company. Hometown: El Paso

Marine Sgt. Fernando Padilla-Ramirez, 26, Marine Wing Support Squadron 371, 3rd Marine Air Wing. Hometown: Yuma, Ariz.

Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 22, 507th Maintenance Company. Hometown: Tuba City, Ariz.

Marine Sgt. Brendon Reiss, 23, Hometown: Casper, Wyo.

Army Pvt. Brandon Sloan, 19, 507th Maintenance Company. Hometown: Bedford Heights, Ohio

Army Sgt. Donald Walters, 33, 507th Maintenance Company. Hometown: Salem, Ore. * Sources: Department of Defense, Associated Press