By Nigel Farndale, Sunday Telegraph
We have been here before, in fiction at least.
Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth. One of his assignments is to invent a hero whose bravery will reflect well on Big Brother.
Step forward
“Comrade Ogilvy”. At the age of three, Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a sub-machine gun and a model helicopter. At nine, he had been a troop leader in the Spies. At 23 he had perished heroically in action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying over the Indian Ocean with important despatches, he had weighted his body with a machine gun and leapt out of the
helicopter into deep water, despatches and all.
Big Brother is pleased with the draft of the imaginary hero’s imaginary life. He adds a few remarks about Ogilvy’s purity and single-mindedness. He considers awarding him a medal.
The date George Orwell chose for the title of his novel was the reverse of the year he wrote it, 1948. Other than that it was arbitrary. As the past could be rewritten, the year did not matter. Instead of 1984 he could have called it, say, 2003. That, as it happens, was the year when another ministry of truth, one known as the Pentagon, decided a hero was needed to reflect well on the president.
Step forward Private Jessica Lynch. She was a 19-year-old, narrow-shouldered natural blonde with a wide and pretty smile. She had left her small farming community in Palestine, West Virginia, to fight for her country in its time of need. And fight she did. In fact she went down fighting, guns ablaze, on March 23, 2003 when her patrol was ambushed and 11 of her comrades were killed.
Heroically, Pte Lynch held off the enemy with her M16 until she was down to her last round. She was then wounded - shot and stabbed, indeed - before being captured by the Iraqis, who tortured and raped her. Because the US Army leaves none of its own behind, a rescue was planned. Eight days later, US Special Forces stormed the heavily guarded hospital where Jessica was
being held.
Despite meeting with fierce resistance, they managed to get her out in a helicopter. She was photographed lying on a stretcher smiling bravely and clutching a Stars and Stripes. She was filmed as well, on a night vision camera. The whole dramatic rescue was filmed, in fact, and the green-tinged footage was beamed around the world. You may remember it.
Pte Lynch was duly hailed an all-American hero and awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. While convalescing in a Washington hospital she was inundated with gifts and flowers from well-wishers, so much so that she asked the public to send cards instead. She appeared on the cover of Newsweek, standing in front of the Stars and Stripes, smiling her pretty
smile.
Her homecoming was triumphant. The farming folk of Palestine, West Virginia, lined the streets wearing Jessica T-shirts and waving Jessica flags as she was delivered by Black Hawk helicopter and transferred, wheelchair and all, to a waiting motorcade. A marching band from her old high school played in
her honour, and, in case the point had been missed, a welcome banner greeted her with the words “American Hero”. Some 200 journalists and 20 satellite trucks (“Camp Jessica” as it was dubbed) recorded the whole event.
She was given a million-dollar book deal to tell her story. A television movie was made of her life, Saving Private Lynch. Not surprisingly, her “narrative arc” proved irresistible and cinematic, the maintenance clerk turned woman-warrior who just wouldn’t quit.
As far as the Pentagon was concerned, her story of heroism was perfect in all but one respect. As she testified last week to a Congressional committee investigating military misinformation, it was a lie. It was a lie, moreover, that she could not live with, whatever its morale-boosting propaganda value.
“Tales of great heroism were being told,” she said from the witness stand. “My parents’ home in Wirt County was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true.”
The truth was she did not fire a single bullet. Pte Lynch had been a supply clerk riding in a convoy that took a wrong turning just outside Nasiriya. The convoy came under attack. The Humvee she was in collided with a jack-knifed US truck. She was left unconscious. The next thing she knew she was in an Iraqi hospital being treated - well - by Iraqi doctors. One nurse sang soothing songs to her.
She had suffered a head laceration, an injury to her spine, and fractures to her right arm, both legs and her right foot and ankle. There were no signs of gunshot or stab wounds, and Lynch’s injuries, including her memory loss, were consistent with those that would be suffered in a car accident. Even though their country was at war, the Iraqi doctors tried to hand Lynch back to the Americans.
Her “rescue” was staged for the cameras. There were no Iraqi forces guarding the hospital, and a local doctor was quoted as saying that the troops seemed to be using blank rounds to “make a show” of the operation.
“I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend,” Lynch said at the hearing last Tuesday. “The bottom line is, the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies. I’m not about to take credit for something I didn’t do. I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I went down praying to my knees. And that’s the last I remember.”
Five months after the incident, Lynch was given a medical honourable discharge from the army and is now a student at West Virginia University’s Parkersburg campus, on a full scholarship because of her military service.
She has a boyfriend, Wes Robinson, and, despite her injuries, was able to conceive and give birth to a baby, through a cæsarean section, earlier this year.
“I continue to deal with bladder, bowel and kidney problems as a result of my injuries,” she said at the hearing. “My left leg still has no feeling from the knee down, and I am required to wear a brace so I can stand and walk\u2026 The truth of war is not always easy to hear, but it is always more heroic than the hype.”
It is depressing to recall how we all laughed at “Comical Ali”, Saddam’s absurd spokesman, with his fantasies about burning American tanks. We thought we were better than that. Perhaps we still are. Fog of war and all that. Truth the first casualty. And perhaps we should not judge the Americans too harshly. At least they do celebrate their heroes, even the invented ones.
As this newspaper revealed recently, the BBC commissioned a film about our genuine Iraq war hero, Pte Johnson Beharry VC, only to shelve it because it was considered “too positive”. Besides, the British were happy to collude with the Americans in their disinformation during the Second World War - the
success of the D-Day landings depended on it. But we were trying to deceive the enemy. Who are the Americans trying to deceive now?
Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, described how Hitler contaminated the morality of his subjects by refusing them access to the truth. He concluded that the entire history of the Third Reich could be re-read as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of reality. Well, the Americans are not as bad as that. Jessica Lynch is still allowed to testify to Congress, and the American media are still allowed to report their testimony.
Also, the Pentagon did get something right, inadvertently. Jessica Lynch did prove herself brave. In a world of military propaganda and disinformation, it takes courage to speak the truth.