POW speaks out about captivity, aftermath - Military Books - Military Times

POW speaks out about captivity, aftermath

Shoshana Johnson is still standing, and she’s speaking up.

Johnson, the nation’s first black female prisoner of war, suffered severe wounds in both legs when her convoy was ambushed on the way to Baghdad in March 2003.

Also in the convoy? Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Spc. Lori Piestewa, who was killed.

In this memoir, Johnson describes the attack, the imprisonment, the rescue by Marines, the acclaim — and the subsequent letdown.

As a cook, she was not prepared to fight. “We didn’t get any training on urban battle, nothing about battle tactics, what to do in case of ambush, how to really fight when and if the time came.”

After her ordeal, she wanted to remain a soldier but disliked “the resentment and pettiness that made it nearly impossible to continue a life in uniform” because of “the celebrity status of us ex-POWs.”

There was “speculation that I was angry and jealous of [Lynch] for the way she was made to appear the hero. Some of the press speculated that she had become the Army’s poster child because she was white and that I felt discriminated against.”

Not true, Johnson said. “Jessica is my friend.”

Johnson speaks with humor and candor. “When the doctor came on the fourth day of my captivity, he told me he needed X-rays of my chest to prepare for my surgery. I wasn’t sure why he needed a chest X-ray for surgery on my legs, but I trusted him.

“I figured I had better tell him what he would see in the X-ray. ‘I should tell you that I am wearing nipple rings,’ I said. His eyes got large, and there was a long pause. ‘Do you want me to take them out?’ I asked him. ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘That will not be necessary.’”

———

Huffman is a Military Times book reviewer.