Book: Jessica Lynch Was Raped

A book about former Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch says she was sexually assaulted by her Iraqi captors, according to the New York Daily News, which obtained an advance copy of the book. Lynch has no memory of the assault.

The biography, authorized by Lynch, says scars on her body and medical records indicate she was sodomized.

Lynch and author Rick Bragg received a reported $1 million from publisher Alfred A. Knopf for the book.

"The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead," Bragg writes, according to the Daily News.

Lynch, 20, suffered broken bones and other injuries when her 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on March 23.

Her rescue on April 1 made her a celebrity, and she returned home to Palestine, W.Va., in July to a hero's welcome after a long hospital stay.

The book dispels some of the myths that have grown up around Lynch's story, including initial reports that she put up a fierce fight against her Iraqi attackers.

Lynch said that her M-16 jammed, making it impossible for her to fire a shot.

"I didn't kill nobody," she said.

Lynch also spoke of kindness from Iraqi doctors and nurses. She denied an assertion by Iraqi lawyer Mohammed Odeh Al Rehaief that she was slapped by one of her Iraqi captors as she lay in a hospital bed.

"Unless they hit me while I was asleep - and why do that?" she said.

Painkillers were scarce in the makeshift Iraqi hospital where the POW was held, and Lynch said one Iraqi nurse tried to ease her agony by singing to her.

"It was a pretty song," Lynch said. "And I would sleep."