Soldier’s Story Seen Through Many Lenses

If you accept that a hero can be defined as a person who exhibits courage or nobility, especially in the face of grave danger, then it’s clear there are at least two, and likely many more, heroes in NBC’s latest TV movie, but only one’s name appears in the title.

At 9 p.m. Sunday, “Saving Jessica Lynch,” directed by Peter Markle from a script by John Fasano, recounts the story of the Army private who, along with her unit, was attacked and taken prisoner during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lynch’s plight and dramatic rescue by U.S. commandos from an Iraqi hospital captured headlines worldwide and turned the petite West Virginian into a poster girl for American pluck and determination.

Less famous is the Iraqi who led U.S. troops to Lynch’s location, at immense risk to his life and the lives of his family.

Produced without Lynch’s cooperation, the movie relies upon interviews with the surviving members of the 507th Maintenance Company -- a noncombat unit of cooks, mechanics and clerks -- which was ambushed March 23 after taking a wrong turn and winding up in the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.

“Absolutely terrifying” is how Canadian Laura Regan, who plays Lynch, describes the filming of the ambush on the movie’s extensive sets this summer outside Dallas.

“It was like the most terrifying thing ever,” she says, “and it was fake. The guns are pointing at you, and they’re firing. You’re firing your own guns back. It’s terrifying.

“They built six blocks of this Iraqi town. So you’re in the town, you’re in the military vehicle, and you’re under fire. The uniform and the set decoration placed us halfway there, because the reality was all around us, even though we were pretending.”

Also contributing to the screenplay are Department of Defense reports and the first-person account of Mohammed Odeh Rehaief, a 33-year-old Iraqi lawyer, husband and father of a 6-year-old daughter.

“He’s a guy that always wants to do the right thing but dreams more than does,” says Nicholas Guilak (“24”), who plays Rehaief. “He gets in trouble because he looks a little too hard, too strong, at things he’s not supposed to, when he sees injustice being done.”

After the ambush, in which 11 soldiers were killed and nine wounded, 19-year-old Lynch is taken to Saddam Hussein Hospital. During a visit to his wife, a nurse at the hospital, Rehaief learns of the plight of Lynch, whose doctor is Rehaief’s sister-in-law.

“Mohammed saw the Fedayeen slapping Jessica and treating her very badly,” Regan says, “which is why he rescued her. He wouldn’t have risked his life if he just saw a girl being treated in a hospital bed.”

“He put it all on the line for this,” Guilak says. “On top of that, he had no idea where he was going. He went out after curfew -- that’s death right there. He walks across the desert, six miles. There’s a war going on, bullets flying both ways. The Americans could kill him, they don’t know who he is. The Fedayeen soldiers would kill him on the spot for being out there.

“He gets lost. The Americans find him. He’s looking at the missiles to find out where the base is, to see where the Iraqis are firing upon.”

Information provided by Rehaief during several trips across the desert, along with other sources, helped guide the U.S. Special Operations team that retrieved Lynch on April 2.

“It warms your heart,” Regan says, “to think that someone would go out of their way and put themselves and their family in danger. He really did, for a stranger.”

At press time, NBC had not made a tape of the film available for review, so there’s no way of knowing how this version of events jibes with facts or published news reports.

On the other hand, information has come out since Lynch’s rescue, including a controversial BBC documentary, that throws those original reports into question, raising doubts about Lynch’s recollection of the events and the necessity of a full-scale raid to rescue her.

As always, there are book deals, with the release of two volumes just before the NBC movie.

In exchange for his help, Rehaief and his family were granted “humanitarian parole” by the Department of Homeland Security. Later granted asylum by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Rehaief is living in the Washington, D.C., area. HarperCollins published his book, “Because Each Life Is Precious: Why an Iraqi Man Risked Everything for Private Jessica Lynch,” last month.

“I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story,” by Lynch and Rick Bragg, was just published by Knopf.

Neither Lynch nor Rehaief could have foreseen where the events of March 23 would eventually lead them. For Rehaief, it was a movie set in Dallas that stirred memories. Guilak recalls his first meeting with the man he was playing.

“He still had his humility when I met him. He was very humble, very excited. Only in America could you go from that extreme to this. We walked around [the set of] Nasiriyah, which was phenomenal to the point that it scared him, made him very nervous.

“I’m sitting there talking to Mohammed about these people in the movie, and it dawns on me in the middle of the dinner that these are people he’s befriended. I’m talking like it’s a story.

“He choked up, and I’m like, ‘Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m asking him about this.’ ”

Kate O’Hare writes for Tribune Media Services.

“Saving Jessica Lynch” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on NBC. The network has rated it TVPG (parental guidance suggested).

Cover photograph by Bill Matlock for NBC.