US/IRAQ: Who is Lynndie England, the tormentor of Iraqi prisoners seen in the pictures that have sullied the US army's reputation? John Woestendiek reports from her home town
Lynndie England loved a good storm.
Growing up in West Virginia, in a quiet crossroads of a town called Fort Ashby, she would seek them out. During tornado warnings, her mother recalls, she would have to drag her daughter back inside the house. Meteorology, her former teachers say, was the career she wanted to pursue - specifically, as a storm-chaser.
Now, the storm has found England. The 21-year-old army reservist is perhaps the most visible character in the controversy over the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad: The thumbs-up girl, the pixie-ish, T-shirted soldier, smiling, pointing and posing for the camera with naked and humiliated Iraqi inmates.
Her mother, who lives in a trailer park, has seen the photographs more times than she can stand. "It's all over the news, but we're not hearing anything new. They just keep showing the pictures. How many times do I have to see those pictures?"
The Englands say they are convinced that their daughter was not involved in any interrogations, that she was not part of any abuse, and that she is not getting a fair shake from the military she loved. Since January, they say, she has been asking for legal representation, and gotten none.
For the past month, they say, she has been restricted to the army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, awaiting word on what repercussions she faces for, in her family's view, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and being photographed there.
They have not seen her since just before Christmas, when she was home for two weeks on leave. Sick, tired, coughing, and about 25 pounds lighter than when she left, England spent most of the time sleeping, they say.
England, a petite woman at 5 foot 2 inches, an independent sort known to speak her mind, joined the reserves while she was a junior at Frankfort High School in Ridgely. She was known for doing her work, causing no trouble and for wearing combat boots and camouflage fatigues to school. After her junior year, while most students were on vacation or working jobs, she went to basic training.
She was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for additional training after graduation, then came back home, working the night shift at a chicken processing plant until, as a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, a unit of the Army Reserve, she was called to duty. Her best friend, Destiny Goin, said they cried for two hours before she left for Iraq.
She stayed in touch regularly - with her parents and sister, with Goin and with an ailing great aunt who lived in eastern Kentucky, where her family was originally from. She would send photos and she would call when she could.
Back home, members of her unit, sent to help provide security at a prison west of Baghdad - one where Saddam Hussein once tortured prisoners - were becoming hometown heroes, their pictures, including England's posted on walls of honour at the courthouse in Keyser and the Wal-Mart in Lavale, Maryland.
In January, though, the phone call from Baghdad came: "I just want you to know that there might be some trouble," Terrie England recalled her daughter saying.
The way the Englands see it, what is happening to their daughter is like what happened with Jessica Lynch - only in reverse. Both were from economically stagnant small towns in West Virginia. Both joined the service soon after high school, hoping to better their opportunities and see the world. Both found themselves - Lynch with a maintenance division, England as an administrative worker - in situations that went far beyond their prescribed job duties.
And, just as government and media accounts of Lynch's capture and rescue portrayed her as more of a hero than the actual circumstances merited, the Englands believe the portrayal of their daughter is painting her as more a villain than they say the facts, once known, may merit.
"Just like what happened with that Lynch girl, this is getting blown out of proportion," said Lynndie's father, Kenneth England, "but in a negative rather than a positive way.
Lynndie is separated from her husband. She told Goin she has tried unsuccessfully to get the army to appoint a lawyer to her case, and has been denied at least three times since January. Army officials say that is customarily not done until someone is charged.
England's mother says she told her family that she was assigned to process prisoners - fingerprinting them and conducting iris scans, they say - but would regularly go visit her fellow reservists working on the other side of the prison. "She shouldn't have been processing prisoners in the first place," her father says. "At night, she would walk across the prison yard to go over and see her buddies. They were the ones doing the interrogations," he said.
The family acknowledged in an interview that Lynndie has a romantic relationship with Charles Graver, a fellow member of the reserve unit. Military officials have confirmed that she is pregnant, but they released no information on whether, or when, England might be charged. (Baltimore Sun)