I’m Just Another Soldier

On Thursday, December 15, 2011, the Iraq War officially ended. I have spent some time in the past few weeks reflecting on the early days of the war and the story of Jessica Lynch.

As you probably remember, Jessica Lynch was a Private First Class in the United States Army in Iraq at the beginning of the war. On March 23, 2003, the convoy in which PFC Lynch was riding was ambushed. Her Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Lynch was badly injured and captured by Iraqi forces. She was held as a POW, but was famously rescued by American forces from an Iraqi hospital in early April 2003.

Upon her return to the United States, Lynch was inundated by requests for interviews and speaking engagements. In January, 2004 Esprit Productions received a call from Harry Rhoads, President of the Washington Speakers Bureau who asked if we could to help her prepare.

Holly Francis, Esprit’s speech coach, and I flew out to Lynch’s hometown of Palestine WV and met her and her family. Lynch told us the real story about what happened to her and her fellow soldiers in the Battle of Nasiriyah. There were a lot of rumors and misinformation about what happened including that she has tried to fight off the Iraqi soldiers. Lynch was eager to set the story straight. In fact, her weapon jammed during the accident and soon after she was knocked unconscious. Testifying before Congress in 2007, she said “There’s soldiers out there every day that are doing heroic things…We don’t need to create them.” We worked with Lynch create a speech that would set the story straight and be source of inspiration to others.

A month later she came to Chicago for a speech coaching session. We invited several of Esprit’s clients to join the session to give their feed back (see photo below).

I came across this interview with Lynch from CNN.com and it’s wonderful to see how her life has moved on. She’s a veteran, a mother, and a college graduate.

Meeting her and helping her tell her story was one of the great thrills of my career. I will always remember how modest she was. As she always said “I am just another soldier.”