Rescued POW reunited with family

THE American POW rescued

“I can’t wait to see her,” Private first class Jessica Lynch’s mother, Deadra Lynch, said before leaving for Germany. Lynch’s father, two siblings and a cousin also flew over from West Virginia.

Their meeting came a day after the family learned that eight members of Lynch’s unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, were killed in the same ambush that resulted in her capture. Among them was Lynch’s friend and former roommate, Pfc Lori Piestewa, who became the first US servicewoman killed in the war.

The Lynch family got word of the deaths on Saturday just before boarding a plane in Charleston, West Virginia.

“Our hearts are really saddened for her other troop members and the other families,” Lynch’s father, Gregory Lynch Sr., said Piestewa was a member of the Hopi Tribe, whose reservation is near the Navajo Reservation community of Tuba City, Ariz. She was a 23-year-old single mother raising two young children.