Recuperating in her hospital bed in southwest Germany, Army Private First Class Jessica Lynch had several requests for her doctors: pink casts for her fractured legs and arm, a new hairbrush and a menu of turkey and steamed carrots for when she was stable enough to eat solid foods. She also had an urgent question: Had the story of her rescue made the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, her hometown paper in Palestine, W.Va., the one-store hamlet in the Appalachian foothills where Lynch had spent nearly all of her 19 years?
Considering that hers was the first successful rescue of an American...