Biography of ex-POW Lynch released

FORMER prisoner of war Private Jessica Lynch screamed and struggled with Iraqi doctors trying to anaesthetise her after one of them said they were going to amputate her leg, according to newly released excerpts from her soon-to-be-released authorised biography.

The surgery never took place and Lynch later heard that it was planned so she could be taken more easily to Baghdad, “probably for a propaganda video”, according to excerpts of I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story.

Lynch was in an operating room when a doctor said: “We are going to have to amputate your leg.”

“They lifted her onto the table,” Bragg wrote. “No! Don’t! she screamed. A nurse tried to cover her face with a mask. She fought. She whipped her head from side to side, to keep them from clamping the mask down on her nose and mouth.

"It slipped from her face again and again, and all the time, an unseen child screamed and screamed. Jessi screamed with him as the nurse tried to put her to sleep. Stop, she heard one of the doctors say. The nurse lifted the mask from her face. Don’t do it, the doctor said. The nurse put the mask down and walked away.”

In an ABC interview, Lynch accuses the military of using her rescue to win public support for the war in Iraq.