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GRAIGNES, France (Reuters) - The lost U.S. paratrooper tapped on the door of the Rigault family’s farmhouse in Normandy in the early hours of June 6, 1944, miles south of his intended drop zone and soaking from his landing in the surrounding marshland. After four years under German occupation, 12-year-old Marthe Rigault, awoken by the roar of aircraft overhead, watched as her parents warmed the foreign soldier with a flask of coffee. By dawn, dozens of men from the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment had hunkered down on the Rigault farm outside the village of Graignes. As they did, the distant...

SNIPPET: "Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dave Gaubatz, the first U.S. civilian (1811) Federal Agent deployed to Iraq in 2003. He is currently the Director of the Mapping Sharia Project and the Owner of DG Counter-terrorism Publishing..." SNIPPET: "Below is a sampling of the results of the interrogations agents and I obtained: I have the documents, photographs, and contact information of Iraqis and U.S. personnel who were also aware. Anything I write or speak about can be verified. Simply ask VP Biden and our President to release the complete intelligence reports my team and I wrote in 2003. 1. When...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Jessica Lynch, the former prisoner of war whose 2003 rescue in Iraq made her an instant celebrity, is pregnant. She and boyfriend Wes Robinson are expecting their first child in January, publicist Aly Goodwin Gregg said Thursday.

EL PASO (AP) - Former POW Shoshana Johnson has signed a deal to write a book about her life and 22 days of captivity after a deadly ambush in the early days of the Iraq war. Johnson, a former U.S. Army specialist with the Fort Bliss-based 507th Maintenance Co., will write "One Wrong Turn" with Paul T. Brown for Dafina Books. The single mother was one of five soldiers captured in the March 23, 2003, ambush that killed nine others in her unit. She suffered injuries to her feet in the attack and has since left the Army with a...

Three years after her capture and dramatic nighttime rescue in the early days of the Iraq war made her an instant celebrity, Jessica Lynch yearns for the ordinary. She's just finished her first year at West Virginia University, where she's become an anonymous college student on a campus of thousands. "I think people recognize who I am; they just don't make it obvious," Lynch, 23, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "That's good for me because it gives me the opportunity to blend in and not stick out and really experience the college life just like they...

ATROCITIES AGAINST AMERICANS 2/6/2004 3:10:00 PM What Really Happened After the Ambush? A new development in the story of former POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch should give pause to anyone who promotes the assignment of female soldiers in or near direct ground combat units. In the fall of 2003 American doctors who examined Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch after her rescue from Iraq confirmed that she had been brutally sodomized by Iraqi thugs. The abuse reportedly occurred shortly after the violent ambush of the 507th Maintenance Unit on March 23, 2003, during a three to four hour period when Lynch was unconscious....

<p>SALEM, Ore. -- A soldier caught up in the same ambush as former POW Jessica Lynch was not killed in action but captured by Iraqi fighters and then executed, officials said.</p> <p>"He was executed -- shot twice in the back," Maj. Arnold Strong, a National Guard spokesman, said in a telephone interview. "An Iraqi ambulance driver witnessed six Fedayeen rebels standing outside a building guarding him while he was still alive. That same witness evacuated his dead body to a hospital."</p>

08:09 PM PDT on Thursday, May 27, 2004 By ABE ESTIMADA, kgw.com Staff SALEM – Sgt. Donald Walters was captured then killed by his Iraqi captors after his U.S. Army convoy took a wrong turn into the town of Nasiriyah during the beginning of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A photo of U.S. Army Sgt. Donald Walters of Salem, which was on display during a past memorial ceremony. (AP Photo) Walters, a Salem man who was thought to have been killed in action and posthumously awarded the Silver Star for his valor in combat, is now considered a prisoner...

PORTLAND, Ore. - A soldier initially listed as killed in action while riding in the same doomed convoy as former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch actually had been captured by Iraqi fighters before he was killed, the Oregon National Guard said Thursday. More than a year after the March 23, 2003, ambush, the military released new details to the family of Sgt. Donald Walters of Salem, Ore. Walters "was held separately from his fellow soldiers and killed while in custody," according to a news release from the National Guard. "He was executed — shot twice in the back," Guard spokesman...

Ex-POW wanted private meeting with Iraqi lawyerFormer POW Jessica Lynch has met the Iraqi lawyer who helped lead American soldiers to the Army supply clerk after her capture last spring. The meeting with Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief took place earlier this month in Washington, D.C., where Lynch was speaking at a seminar. "It was a wonderful meeting and I can never control my emotion," said al-Rehaief, who is in Huntington for a Saturday book signing. Al-Rehaief said Lynch was grateful for his part in her rescue. "She tell me ‘thank you,' and she say ‘thank you very much for what you...

8 Bodies Found in Raid Were U.S. Soldiers .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Eight of the bodies found during the rescue of an American POW in Iraq this week were members of her ambushed Army maintenance unit, the Pentagon announced Saturday. The eight soldiers were with Pfc. Jessica Lynch when their unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, was ambushed near Nasiriyah on March 23. The U.S. commandos who freed Lynch from a hospital in Nasiriyah this week also found 11 bodies, nine of which were believed to be those of Americans. The nine bodies had been returned to a...

SMITHVILLE LAKE, Mo. -- Family and friends honored a fallen soldier Tuesday. Sgt. Don Walters died exactly one year ago Tuesday in an ambush in Iraq. It was the same ambush where Jessica Lynch was captured. Tuesday, friends and family planted a red maple leaf tree at Smithville Lake to honor Walters. The family recently learned that the military would honor Walters with a silver star for his bravery during the ambush.

CENTER POINT, Texas (Reuters) - At a ceremony on Tuesday marking the one-year anniversary of the Iraqi attack on Pvt. Jessica Lynch's Army unit, the widow of a soldier who died in the fight blasted President Bush (news - web sites) for "lying to America" to justify the Iraq (news - web sites) war. In bitter comments beside the grave of Army Specialist James Kiehl, widow Jill Kiehl accused Bush of fabricating reasons to launch the invasion that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). "The evidence that's starting to come out now feels like he (Bush) was...

Too Many Medals? Michael Moran for MSNBC For 1st Lt. John O. Merrill, the fateful moment came in the skies over Mayen, Germany in February 1945, when he continued to fly his burning, flak-riddled B-26 bomber until all of his crew could bail out. Capt. Ernie Arzabal's setting was different -- Vietnam, 1970 -- but the story familiar. Flying a light observation helicopter, Arzabal repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire in order to rescue wounded American troops. These actions earned both men the Distinguished Flying Cross, a decoration given to a relative handful of soldiers since Charles Lindbergh won the...

NEW YORK -- Nearly a year after being shot and taken prisoner in Iraq, former Army specialist Shoshana Johnson said the 22 days she spent in captivity do not make her a hero. "I'm a survivor, not a hero," Johnson told Essence magazine in its March issue. "The heroes are the soldiers who paid the ultimate price and the Marines who risked their lives to rescue us. ... They took a chance and because they did, I'm here." Johnson, 31, of El Paso, Texas, was a cook for the 507th Maintenance Company when it was ambushed in March 2003. She...

A new development in the story of former POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch should give pause to anyone who promotes the assignment of female soldiers in or near direct ground combat units. In the fall of 2003 American doctors who examined Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch after her rescue from Iraq confirmed that she had been brutally sodomized by Iraqi thugs. The abuse reportedly occurred shortly after the violent ambush of the 507th Maintenance Unit on March 23, 2003, during a three to four hour period when Lynch was unconscious. (See “Jessica Lynch Reality Shatters Amazon Myths”) On March 23, 2003, Al...

Former POW, Shoshana Johnson, Visits Philadelphia Johnson Shot In Ankles During Captivity 4:36 PM EST January 9, 2004PHILADELPHIA -- Former prisoner of war, Shoshana Johnson spent more than three weeks being held in Iraq. Friday, she visited Philadelphia and NBC 10 reporter Joe Vasquez got a chance to talk to her about her ordeal and life after the Army."I'm doing OK. I have a lot of support from my family," Johnson told NBC 10 News.Johnson is still recovering after being shot in both ankles in Iraq. "I still have problems with my legs. I use a cane once in a...

After forcing myself to read Jessica Lynch's book I've come to the conclusion that this country needs to have a talk -- an honest, no holds barred, to-heck-with-brain-numbing-political correctness, talk with itself. Do women belong in combat situations or not? Are we going to engage in an emotional orgy every time a woman soldier gets captured or not? Is a female soldier's life more precious than a man's or not? Jessica Lynch seems like a nice enough girl and she has suffered horribly but she's not a heroine as she herself has stated. She was thrown into a hideous situation...

I recently appeared on the November 11, 2003 episode of the Montel Williams show. The program featured guests who had lost loved ones in the war in Iraq. One of the guests, Kathy Dowdy, recalled hearing that her husband, 1st Sgt. Robert Dowdy, had been killed: "They found 11 shallow graves. One of the bodies was my husband. He was a first sergeant of 507th Main--Maintenance Unit. Couldn't ask for a better husband. Gave up his life for us. He took somebody else's place going to Iraq. He wasn't supposed to go to Kuwait at all," recalled Dowdy, tears streaming...

It was an easy story to write: Wholesome 19-year-old from rural West Virginia dreams of becoming a kindergarten teacher but, in a brutal early twist of the Iraq war, becomes the Barbie doll symbol of the new American veteran. U.S. Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, now 20, was frail, heroic, patriotic, blonde. She was a victim rescued on dramatic video, so print, broadcast and online journalists ate up her capture and rescue like hyenas. In the process, they skipped a story that wasn't as easy to write: a married, African-American mother of a toddler, an immigrant from Panama living in Texas,...