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Thursday, April 03, 2003

By Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

ELIZABETH, W.VA. -- As the yellow metal basket of a cherry picker groaned into the air above her head, Debbie Hennen scowled, pointed and yelled directions from the sidewalk until the hastily summoned crew inside the basket finished repairing the broken flagpole above the Wirt County Courthouse.

Wirt County tax assessor Debbie Hennen watches the celebration continue to unfold from the front window of the Wirt County Journal newspaper office, a day after word swept through town that Pfc. Jessica Lynch had been rescued from an Iraqi hospital. (John Beale, Post-Gazette) RELATED STORIES Lynch kept firing at attacking Iraqi paramilitaries until she ran out of ammo POWs recall lasting scars, severe trauma after liberation More pictures in the daily photo journal

Moments later, the Stars and Stripes went swirling up the pole, flying high above a town already plastered with smaller flags, yellow bows and hastily crayoned outbursts of thanksgiving to celebrate the rescue of their neighbor, U.S. Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

"We needed to have our American flag and our West Virginia flag flying up there," said Hennen, a Hampton native who now owns a farm in Wirt County and serves as its tax assessor.

Like Hennen, Elizabeth and the nearby village of Palestine were awash in elation yesterday, one sleepless night after Wirt County and the world learned that Lynch had been rescued in a daring raid on a hospital in Nasiriyah, Iraq.

But even though the celebrations started Tuesday evening and lasted well into the next morning, it wasn't until 6:45 last night that Lynch's parents, Gregory Sr. and Deadra, finally got the call they'd been frantic to receive.

Cousin Pam Nicolais answered the phone, then handed it to Deadra to hear the voice of a groggy Jessica, who had arrived a U.S. military hospital in Germany.

Both of her parents spoke with her, as did her brother, Gregory Jr., before they held out the phone for 30 friends and relatives gathered in the yard to shout "We love you, Jessi," and burst into applause.

	Greg Lynch Sr. and Deadra Lynch, parents of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, during a press conference yesterday in front of their home in Palestine, W. Va. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)

Lynch told her parents that she had two broken legs and a broken arm, but didn't say how she'd been wounded or talk about what happened to her while she was in captivity.

"She's too tired right now to comment on stuff like that," said her brother, who enlisted with Jessica in the Army two years ago and is now a private first class stationed at Fort Bragg. "She's weak. She knows she's injured, and they're doing the best they can to so she can travel as soon as she's stable."

A native of tiny Palestine, Lynch, 19, had been missing since March 23, when she and about a dozen other members of the 507th Maintenance Co. were ambushed in a supply convoy by Iraqi soldiers.

By yesterday morning, the horn-honking, firecracker-popping hoopla that clogged Elizabeth's narrow main street had died down, as Wirt County's 5,000 residents went home to watch morning television news reports about Jessica's rescue.

	Leslie Maze, left, Debbie Hennen, center, and Lorane Fought pray during a service of thanksgiving for the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch at the Elizabeth United Methodist Church in Elizabeth W. Va. Jessica grew up in nearby Palestine, WV, and went to high school in Elizabeth. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)

In Hill's Exxon and convenience store, in Dick's Market, in homes all over the hills and valleys of this rural county, people gasped aloud or embraced each other as they caught a brief glimpse of Lynch's face while other soldiers carried her on a stretcher to safety.

At the same time, 300 students at Wirt County High School, where Lynch graduated two years ago and her younger sister, Brandi, is now a senior, swarmed into the auditorium to sing "God Bless America," to cheer and to shake off the malaise that has lingered in the school's halls since word came of the ambush.

"A lot of people, in the beginning, didn't believe this could happen to someone from here," said senior Christy Alltop, 17, who played on the high school basketball team with Lynch. "It really says a lot about our community, to see how we all have prayed, how we all came together."

	Charlie Shoffner, 74, puts a sign in the yard of a cousin of Jessica Lynch, after the Army private was rescued in Iraq. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)

There was even more hugging five miles down winding Route 14 in tiny Palestine, at the Lynch family's cozy, white chalet-style house tucked in a wooded valley off Mayberry Run road.

On the wood-railed porch and in a living room decorated with family photographs, the Lynches and their children shuttled between answering constant telephone calls and greeting groups of neighbors and well-wishers who walked up their driveway to rejoice with them.

Earlier yesterday, the Lynches were euphoric but past exhausted, having spent more than a week buoying each other spirits while answering calls and media inquiries from all over the world.

His eyes red and slitted and his voice sluggish with weariness, Gregory Sr., a self-employed truck driver, said he and his family never doubted that their daughter would come home alive.

"About all we've got to hang onto is faith and hope," he said, his right hand clutching the hand of his wife beside him. "If we lose faith and quit praying to the Lord, there's no hope. Our prayers brought the Lord in close and gave us an opportunity for Jessi to feel us."

	U.S. Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch is carried on a stretcher off a C-17 military plane at the U.S. air base in Ramstein, southern Germany. Her parents were overjoyed as they watched the transfer live on TV. (Michael Probst, Associated Press)

Their faith was rewarded when they saw live news reports of Jessica being moved from an airplane to the German hospital.

"There wasn't a dry eye anywhere," said West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, who was visiting when those reports aired and who later joined about 100 others who to celebrate what he called "The miracle that has come to the mountains" at a service in Elizabeth's United Methodist Church.

Jessica and Gregory Jr. enlisted in the Army in order to get a college education -- often a difficult thing to accomplish when you hail from a county that is among West Virginia's poorest, where there is no industry and unemployment runs at about 15 percent.

By yesterday, at least two West Virginia universities had offered scholarships to her, and Wise said other offers of financial assistance for her and her family were pouring in from around the country.

Peggy Shears, the lone reporter and employee in the two-room offices of the Wirt County Journal, the town's weekly newspaper, found itself scooped on the biggest local story in recent memory because this week's edition went to press Tuesday before news broke of Lynch's rescue.

Unable to write a fresh story for days, Shears instead spent the day at her desk, taking calls from people who asked her to help them with everything from talking the Lynches into selling their film rights to passing on a $1,000 donation from a Florida man who also is named Lynch.

"Let me tell you something, dear," Shears said, reaching for a tissue to blow her nose and wipe away tears. "I don't care that it was too late for us [to publish news of Lynch's rescue] today. The story I want to see in this little hometown country paper is the one that says, "She's coming home.' "

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cindi Lash can be reached at clash@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1973.