Down a two-lane blacktop rolling through dry farmlands, just a mile or two from the ambush site, lies the Iraqi military hospital of Nasiriyah. It was where Lynch was first treated after her capture.
Today, the three-story structure is a gutted ruin, charred from fires. Mangled brown Iraqi military vehicles fill the parking lot.
On the morning of Lynch's capture, the military hospital was a beehive, with fleeing, fighting and wounded Iraqi troops coming and going as U.S. troops swept into Iraq from Kuwait.
Adnan Mushafafawi, a brigadier in the Iraqi army medical corps, a member of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and the director of the hospital, said a policeman brought in two female U.S. soldiers about 10 a.m.
"They were both unconscious," he said. They were severely wounded, he recalled, exhibiting symptoms of shock and trauma. He read their dog tags: They were Lynch and her friend and Piestewa.
"Miss Lori," Mushafafawi said, "had bruises all over her face. She was bleeding from the eyes. A severe head wound." He said Piestewa died soon after arriving at the hospital.
Did either soldier display evidence she had been stabbed or shot? "No, no," he said. Pressed, he later answered, "Maybe Miss Lori, maybe shot."
Mushafafawi said he and his medical staff cut away Lynch's uniform and threw her clothes on the floor. She lay on a gurney, almost naked, as Iraqi military doctors and nurses worked on her, he said.
Lynch had multiple fractures, Mushafafawi said, and a head injury that he described as minor. He said the staff sutured the wound. She was given blood and intravenous fluids, he said. The staff took X-rays, partly set her fractures and applied splints and plaster casts to them.
"If we had left her without treatment, she would have died," Mushafafawi said.
The military doctor said Lynch briefly regained consciousness at his hospital, but appeared disoriented. "She was very scared," he said. "We reassured her that she would be safe now."
But when Mushafafawi suggested to Lynch that he might attempt to better set her leg fracture, Lynch told him, "No, she didn't want us to do anything more," he recalled.
"She was here two, three hours," the doctor said and then transferred by military ambulance to Nasiriyah's main civilian facility, Saddam Hussein General Hospital across town.
Mushafafawi said he assumed his military hospital probably would be attacked by U.S. forces, who two days later overran the compound. He said that it was his decision to transfer Lynch and that no military or intelligence officers accompanied her. Piestewa's body also was transported to Saddam Hussein hospital.
Mushafafawi said he did not know what happened to Piestewa or Lynch between their capture shortly after 7 a.m. and their appearance at his hospital about three hours later.
