Crash caused Lynch's 'horrific injuries'

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The Army will release a report tomorrow on the ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company in Iraq that will show Pfc. Jessica Lynch and another female soldier suffered extensive injuries in a vehicle accident, but not from Iraqi fighters.

The deadly March 23 battle in Nasiriyah, in central Iraq, has emerged as perhaps the most famous incident in the war -- both for what happened and for what was reported to have happened, but did not.

The Army's 15-page report officially will debunk accounts that Pfc. Lynch emptied two revolvers at her attackers and was shot and stabbed before being taken prisoner of war. In fact, she was riding in a Humvee that was struck by a projectile during a frantic attempt to escape the ambush. She suffered "horrific injuries," said Pentagon sources familiar with the report.

Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, a good friend of Pfc. Lynch's, was driving the Humvee. The strike on the vehicle caused her to lose control. The utility vehicle smashed into a disabled tractor-trailer at more than 45 mph, critically injuring Pfc. Piestewa, the Pentagon sources said.

Rumors surfaced that Pfc Piestewa, 23, of Tuba City, Ariz., was killed by Iraqis at the scene. But the Pentagon sources said she died later at a Nasiriyah hospital of injuries suffered in the crash. She was the only military woman to die in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Pentagon statistics show.

Pfc. Lynch also was pulled from the wreckage and taken to the same hospital. "Lynch survived principally because of the medical attention she received from the Iraqis," one source said.

A week later, she became one of the war's most recognized faces. A combat camera crew recorded American special-operations forces carrying her broken body on a stretcher from the hospital to a rescue aircraft.

The report also will show that the company's senior enlisted soldier, 1st Sgt. Robert Dowdy, worked furiously to reorganize the 507th 13-vehicle convoy so it could make a retreat. Traveling in Pfc. Piestewa's Humvee, Sgt. Dowdy stopped, got out of the vehicle and tried to motivate other soldiers. Two soldiers whose truck was disabled got into the Humvee with Sgt. Dowdy and the two female soldiers.

"This was a fight," a Pentagon source said. "They got popped at different locations. There were battles. They were fighting back."