It's an ironic epilogue given she is among the most memorable figures of the Iraq war, but reports indicate that rescued American PoW Private Jessica Lynch barely recalls anything about her ordeal.
"She basically has amnesia and has mentally blocked out the horrible things we strongly believe she went through," an unnamed military official has told Fox News.
Gregory Lynch says that his sister, who is recuperating in a Washington hospital, just isn't talking. "We don't push the fact to ask her. We're just there to support her and to help her get well," he told The Associated Press.
Whether reticent, traumatized, suffering from memory loss or being kept under wraps, the 19-year-old supply clerk has yet to publicly give her account of being a prisoner of war.
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Skepticism, however, has arisen around earlier news accounts of her fiercely gunning down enemy soldiers and suffering abuse while in an Iraqi hospital.
Pte. Lynch was part of a convoy ambushed after getting lost in southern Iraq during the opening days of the war. Some members of her unit were shot, some were killed and others were captured. Somehow, Pte. Lynch was separated from the other survivors.
Missing for nine days, she resurfaced only when a crack team of military rescuers pulled her from an Iraqi hospital on April 1 with videotapes rolling. She was wounded, but alive, and filmed while being carried out on a stretcher and under a blanket of Stars and Stripes.
Footage of the rescue was shown around the world, lifting U.S. war spirits. Books and movies about saving Pte. Lynch are in the works, but some key details remain unclear.
U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld says he is aware of accounts of Pte. Lynch's memory loss but would not confirm them. "I have nothing to say about her situation," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "That's for doctors and her family to deal with."
People in Pte. Lynch's West Virginia hometown say they don't know anything about the reports. "We have not heard that from her mom," family friend Debbie Hennen said in an interview.
Recent published accounts of Pte. Lynch's captivity have diverged from those recounted at the time of her rescue.
For example, The Washington Post had quoted an anonymous U.S. official as saying that Pte. Lynch was captured after "fighting to the death" — and that she shot several Iraqis even after being wounded. But the paper's ombudsman used a more recent column to question these details and concluded that "what really happened is not clear."
After speaking to Iraqis at the hospital, other media outlets have also called into question details of the rescue and accounts of Pte. Lynch's alleged mistreatment while a prisoner.
An Iraqi doctor told one newspaper that Pte. Lynch's injuries more likely resulted from a fall from her vehicle than from gunfire. Another newspaper reported that before the rescue operation, medical staff tried to drive Pte. Lynch to U.S. forces, but were turned back.
Some accounts have suggested that Pte. Lynch was abused at the hospital, but one of her Iraqi doctors disputes that. "We all became friends with her, we liked her so much," he was quoted as saying. "Especially because we all speak a little English, we were able to assure her the whole time that there was no danger, that she would go home soon."
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