Lori Piestewa - Ambush in Nasiriyah, Iraq

Ambush in Nasiriyah, Iraq

Piestewa was a member of the US Army's 507th Maintenance Company, a support unit of maintenance and repair personnel. Her company was traveling in a convoy through the desert and was meant to bypass Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq, during the opening days of the war; but the convoy got lost and ran into an ambush in Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003.

As Piestewa came under "a torrent of fire" (in the words of an Army investigation of the battle), she drove at a high speed, successfully evading the enemy fire until an RPG hit the front-left wheel well of her Humvee. The force of the explosion sent her vehicle into the rear of a disabled tractor-trailer. Piestewa, Johnson, and Lynch all survived the crash with injuries, while three other soldiers in the Humvee died. They were taken prisoner along with four others, with Piestewa dying soon after of her wounds. A video of some of the American prisoners of war, including Piestewa (filmed shortly before she died in an Iraqi hospital), was later shown around the world on Al Jazeera television. According to Jessica Lynch's book—I'm a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story—Piestewa was wounded in the head, and it was impossible to perform delicate neurosurgery in an Iraqi civilian hospital in wartime conditions (such as intermittent electric power). In a U.S. military hospital with reliable power and neurosurgeons available around the clock, she might have survived.

The families of soldiers in the 507th heard almost right away of the ambush and fatalities in the unit. The Piestewa family saw people in her unit being interviewed by Iraqi TV, and for more than a week families of the two women waited for news. All around Tuba City signs were hung out telling people: "Put your porch light on, show Lori the way home." They used white stone to spell her name on a 200 foot high mesa just outside the town.