{"id":418,"date":"2003-12-13T11:16:10","date_gmt":"2003-12-13T11:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/?p=418"},"modified":"2003-12-13T11:16:10","modified_gmt":"2003-12-13T11:16:10","slug":"the-jessica-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/2003\/12\/the-jessica-book\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jessica Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rick Bragg&#8217;s narrative <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/12\/14\/books\/review\/14LIPSKYT.html?adxnnl=1&#038;8hpib=&#038;adxnnlx=1071341977-ssYWBbsO3t+zmvtWsQQlDw&#038;pagewanted=print&#038;position=\">reviewed in the New York Times.<\/a> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some reviewers have questioned whether, without the exploits initially attributed to her, there could be any power in Lynch&#8217;s narrative. (Though Bragg does not say so, the early error had a simple explanation. According to later news reports, the Army was intercepting Iraqi radio chatter, and overheard that a yellow-haired soldier from Lynch&#8217;s unit had indeed fought bravely and fallen; that soldier turned out to be a sergeant named Donald Walters. Interpreters confused the Arabic pronouns for &#8221;he&#8221; and &#8221;she&#8221; and thought it was Lynch.) Some of the best war writing, though, takes place along the confused margins of combat. And Bragg powerfully details the series of mistakes &#8212; exhaustion, vehicle malfunction, poor communication &#8212; that led the 507th into their ambush; these scenes are the high point of the book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a<a href=\"http:\/\/washingtontimes.com\/national\/20030728-122338-5552r.htm\"> UK-based story on Sgt.  Walters,<\/a> a cook who died in the attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rick Bragg&#8217;s narrative reviewed in the New York Times. Some reviewers have questioned whether, without the exploits initially attributed to her, there could be any power in Lynch&#8217;s narrative. (Though Bragg does not say so, the early error had a&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/2003\/12\/the-jessica-book\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}