Hyped Story Of Lynch's Capture Covers Officer's Incompetence, Vets Say

Three old soldiers say the hoopla over Pfc. Jessica Lynch has drowned out a darker story - that her company commander foolishly put Lynch and her comrades in harm's way.

Just as bad, the three say, is the Army's official report on what happened on March 23 when Lynch's 507th Maintenance Company ran into a firefight in the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.

The report calls the clash "a tragedy" and says the 507th's soldiers "fought hard. ... Every soldier performed honorably, and each did his or her duty."

That statement raises the eyebrows of retired artillery Col. Jerry Morelock of Fulton, Mo., now the director of Westminster College's Churchill Memorial.

In an e-mail interview, Morelock questioned whether the company commander had acted honorably and done his duty. That commander was Capt. Troy King. Morelock noted that King had:

Gotten his soldiers in one piece through a hostile city - and then turned around and driven back through it. (At that point, Morelock says, "the Iraqis found the soft targets presented to them by Capt. King's incompetence too tempting to pass up.")

Refused to jettison his unit's trailers, even when they slowed what should have been a hasty retreat.

Tom Kuypers of St. Charles is a retired lieutenant colonel of infantry. In an e-mail interview, he offered a stark judgment: "Capt. King will have to live with the burden that he failed to accomplish his mission. He failed his troops as a commander. He lacked competence as an officer. ... Commanders never abandon their troops in battle."

Another retired lieutenant colonel of infantry, Ed Kennedy of Leavenworth, Kan., shared that view. By e-mail, he quoted a maxim heard often in the Army: "A commander is responsible for everything his unit does - or fails to do."

All three veterans were stunned by the report's repeated mention of weapons jamming or malfunctioning. All three called the breakdowns a classic symptom of bad leadership.

Kuypers termed the jamming "a giveaway for lax discipline and the unit's lack of attention to detail." Kennedy said, "Dirty rifles are a sign of indiscipline, no matter how you cut it."

Kennedy blamed what he called "a major cultural divide between the combat arms and those of support soldiers. It's almost as if we're in different armies. And the 507th is part of this non-combat arms culture. There's a lot of tough talk but an underlying softness. They take pride in living in tents or trucks and not being fighters."

Kennedy added, "I think the pervasive number of females has made this even worse in the last 25 years."

But Kuyper said the 507th had gotten little in the way of help from the links above it in the chain of command. Among other things, he said, nobody provided an airborne escort, even though "helicopters routinely 'cover' convoys."

Even Kennedy said: "The leaders were all suffering from sleep deprivation and exhaustion. This added to the problem. ... Even a good rest plan can't fix this problem, and I empathize with their physical condition. I've been there. But battle drills that are rehearsed counter the effects of sleep deprivation."

King's home station is Fort Bliss, Texas. A spokeswoman there, Maj. Catie Morelle-Oliveira, said King had decided against granting interviews but was preparing a written statement.

Morelock scoffed at the press's lionization of Pfc. Lynch. In the official report, Morelock said, Lynch "comes across as just some poor young kid who got smashed up in a vehicle accident. In all likelihood, the Iraqis probably saved her life. Certainly they did more to ensure her immediate survival than Capt. King did."

Morelock's final words targeted the Army itself: "To refer to this combat action as 'a tragedy' - an 'event' in which the convoy seemingly just happened to find itself - is nonsense. Dismissing the whole thing by claiming that 'all served nobly' and then throwing medals at them is an insult to the soldiers who died and ought to be an embarrassment to the survivors."

Further research has uncovered more details of Pfc. Lynch's captivity and rescue from Saddams' "hospital" and "doctors":

Exclusive:AF 1 Pilot Saved Jessica Lynch Ten helicopters, carrying the 300 troops.
Exclusive:AF 1 Pilot Saved Jessica Lynch
Former Air force one pilot Col. Knoll Commander of MAG 19 was the
Commander of the Operation to save Jessica Lynch in Iraq.
Pfc. Jessica Lynch is the first POW/MIA rescued from Operation: Iraqi Freedom.She was the first prisoner of war to be rescued behind enemy lines since World War II.
Col. Knoll said on 08/09/03 that 300 troops took part in the operation and 10 helicopters under his command.
Col. Knoll:
"Ten helicopters, carrying the 300 troops from all divisions of U.S. military, arrived at the hospital site to make the rescue"
"We risked hundreds of people to go in and get one POW."

Source

"Commanded by Col. Knoll, MAG-16 provided the assault support helicopters (7 CH-46Es and 3 CH-53Es) used in the raid on Saddam Hospital, An Nasiriyah April 1-2, in search of American prisoners of war. HMM-165 and HMH-465 inserted 288 Army Rangers under the cover of darkness. The raid successfully rescued Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch. This was the first American POW rescued since World War II and they also recovered nine Americans killed in action as well as two Iraqi individuals...Knoll led the assault support helicopters used in the successful raid...At its peak, MAG-16 combined for a total of 1,321 Marines and Sailors under Colonel Knoll's command..." - Scroll down for updates at:
http://www.4law.co.il/L697.html
better picture here in the page at:
http://www.4law.co.il/Lea22.jpg

SFC Gregory Walker Co. A, 1-19th Special Forces (Airborne) and author of "At the Hurricane's Eye - U.S. Special Operations Forces from Vietnam to Desert Storm", upon reading the above report replied:

Having written extensively on past U.S. POW operations to include the Son Tay Raid (November 1970, Son Tay, North Vietnam), the successful SEAL POW raid that was executed parallel to Son Tay (November 1970, Cua Lon River, South Vietnam), and on Detachment DELTA, SEAL Team SIX, and SOAR 160 ("At the Hurricane's Eye - U.S. Special Operations Forces from Vietnam to Desert Storm") - the report noted requires clarification to be a more accurate account.

The Marines were part of a combined forces operation involving elements of Task Force Tarawa (USMC) and U.S. special operations forces, primarily Task Force 20 (a specially configured force made up of U.S. special operations professionals to include the Army's Ranger Regiment, the Navy's elite counter terrorist team SEAL Team 6, the Army's Detachment DELTA (counter terrorism), and aviation support from the Army's elite "Night Stalkers", or Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) 160. Specially selected / trained support personnel from the special operations community (Army) were likewise involved both at the launch site at Talil Air Field in Iraq, and at Camp Doha, Kuwait.

The Marine Corps provided primarily the outer security perimeter for the assault in the form of mechanized Marine forces meant to seize and hold a large circle around the hospital and to, if possible, prevent high value targets such as the then still alive "Chemical Ali" - believed to possibly be in the area - from escaping. They were also to prevent enemy forces from reinforcing the hospital / command center. They had a difficult time coordinating their plans / forces and this delayed the overall operation - and Lynch being rescued -for roughly 48-hours. This force was also to be a last-ditch safety net should the Iraqi irregular, or paramilitary forces believed to be holding the POWs evade the inner perimenter held by the rangers and take Lynch and the others - who were not yet known to be dead - away from the hospital.

It is unfortunate the Marine officer interviewed in this report did not provide a clearer picture as to the overall joint forces effort this operation required.

The actual assault was carried out by an all-special operations force. Army rangers from two of the three ranger battalions in the Regiment seized and held the more important inner perimeter around what was now called "Objective Scorpion" where Lynch was confirmed to be. Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 6 executed the actual assault which was picture perfect due to the precise "U.S. eyes-on" and video information provided by known and vetted intelligence sources, both military and civilian, involved in the operation's planning. Upon the SEALs entering the hospital grounds two bodies were discovered laying in the hospital's courtyard. Four to six bodies were discovered in the hospital's morgue. The "hospital" was in fact a carnage factory in which its medical staff did what it was they were told to do, when they were told to do it, and how they were told to do it. This is why an Iraqi lawyer - not an Iraqi physician - played the vital role he did in seeing our POW recovered from this site.

Lynch's injuries and suspected wounds were predicted and planned for in terms of initial medical attention (triage) based upon the earlier discovery of two of the missing US female soldiers' uniform items (Lynch's being some of these). These items were discovered by U.S. Marines during their operations in the city and were found in a second floor bathroom of a building the Marines had searched/cleared. The items, marked by their owners for personal identification purposes using heavy duty "100 mile and hour" tape, included Lynch's perforated and bloody body armor and the womens' damaged / cut away chemical protectives suits that they'd been wearing at the time of their capture. The primary physican for Task Force 20 personally cared for Lynch when she was brought aboard the specially designed and equipped medical evacuation helicopter belonging to Task Force 20.

The SEAL assault team was flown into the objective by Army Blackhawk helicopters owned and flown by the Night Stalkers of SOAR 160. This is the same unit and fliers who did such a magnificent job in Somalia ("Blackhawk Down"). The Marine air element described provided heavy transport for the ranger assault teams. The medical evac helo used to care for Lynch was likewise SOAR 160 owned and operated.

Specific Rules of Engagement were authorized at the National Command Authority for the operation and are so written, staffed, and approved for ALL U.S. POW recovery operations.

It was also Task Force 20 operators who were inbound and on the ground at Talil within hours the first sustainable information being recieved regarding our POWs. They formed the core of the planning process for the operation. This included an earlier investigated series of reports of American POWs possibly being held at a small girls' school on the outskirts of the city. Iraqi sources had reported the school being taken over by Iraqi irregular forces, and medical personnel from the nearby hospital being brought in to attend the injured Americans (Again, the Iraqi medical personnel did as they were told by Iraqi intelligence / security forces. Their efforts were self-serving to the nth degree leaving doing "the hard right" over the "easy wrong" to the average Iraqi citizen who provided information, and the specific Iraqi attorney who risked his life and the lives of his family to go far beyond his humanitarian duties on behalf of Lynch).

This was the first "hard" report and potential sighting of US POWs in the area and it became the lynch pin for the follow-on effort conducted by US forces to recover PVT Lynch and her fellow soldiers before they could be executed or moved further north into the Baghdad area.

These operations were buoyed by a days-earlier POW operation conducted by British forces in Basura to recover two captured UK soldiers. This operation was mounted within 48 hours of the soldiers' capture, with information leading the UK force to a disguised Iraqi command and control center (using a civilian structure to protect its true military purpose). One UK POW had already been mistreated and executed by his captors by the time Brit forces stormed the compound. The second UK POW was successfully rescued. Over 100 Iraqi opposition forces were killed in the raid. This operation occurred several days prior to the rescue of Lynch and provided an insight into how the Iraqi irregular and intelligence forces were going to deal with Coalition POWs unless they could be located and freed as soon as possible.

Upon her being successfully extracted from "Scorpion" Lynch was first taken to Talil Air Field then to an air base in Kuwait. She was flown by SOAR 160 pilots and crews, and guarded by Army/Navy SOF operators from Task Force 20. She was transported to a secure medical facility by Task Force 20 personnel waiting on the ground for her arrival in Kuwait.

The bodies of her fellow soldiers, mistreated and then executed by Iraqi irregular forces at the hospital, were dug up by hand by the operators of SEAL Team 6 from their shallow graves. They were then transported out of Objective Scorpion along with the raiders and inner security ranger teams left to protect SIX's operators as they searched for remaining living POWs, Iraqi high value targets (i.e. "Chemical Ali"), and any additional evidence of possible weapons of mass destruction (documents, ordinance) that may have been held in what was actually an Iraqi senior level command and control installation, to include torture chamber.

Finally, Lynch is NOT the first American POW rescued from behind enemy lines since WW2. U.S. Army Special Forces officer James "Nick" Rowe was rescued by U.S. Army helo forces from his jungle prison camp in the mid-1960s. Rowe had been held POW for 5 years and is the only American military officer held as a prisoner during the Vietnam War to successfully escape and be rescued. His story is told in his excellent book "Five Years to Freedom" which is available in paperback.

Another excellent book is available from Army colonel Martin Stanton. Colonel Stanton was ordered to remain at his post in Kuwait City at the onset of the first gulf war and to real-time report on the Iraqi advance into Kuwait City until he could report no longer. He did so and was discovered / captured by the Iraqis. He was moved to the Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad and held there until released at the end of the conflict. Colonel Stanton would return to the Al Rasheed in early April 2003, this time not as a POW but as a victor. I was privileged to serve as one of his armed escorts during this incredible warrior's walking tour of his former Baghdad prison. His book describing his experiences, "Baghdad on $5.00 a Day" is available in paperback.

It, like Nick Rowe's book, is must reading.

Rowe would, many years later, return to the army and develop its Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion (SERE) program at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. SERE training in its three levels has long been a staple for special operations personnel like those who rescued Lynch, and specially selected military personnel such as SOAR 160's pilots and crews. Colonel Nick Rowe would be assassinated in the Phillipines in 1989 by communist insurgents. His legacy, which brought the plight of POWs to the military's attention at the highest levels and resulted in a rewriting of how U.S. personnel can and should comport themselves if taken prisoner, likewise resulted in the highly honored POW medal awarded to Lynch and to her fellow soldiers, both living and deceased.

Stanton, who likewise shared in the fear and joy of Lynch's rescue from a command post in Kuwait, was instrumental in the early rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure in Baghdad.

V/R

Greg Walker, author of "At the Hurricane's Eye - U.S. Special Operations Forces from Vietnam to Desert Storm"

Source

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