Private Lynch, 19, has become something of national hero in the United States. Her return to Andrews airbase, just outside Washington, was broadcast live on many television channels.

She arrived on board a C-17 military transport aircraft from the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany along with 50 other wounded US troops and their families and friends.

Iraqi forces ambushed Lynch's company which had taken a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah on March 23.

US special forces rescued her on April 1 from hospital after an apparent tipoff from an Iraqi. There, they found the bodies of eight of her comrades who had initially been listed as missing in action.

Following her dramatic rescue, Lynch was taken for treatment to the biggest US military hospital outside the United States at Landstuhl, Germany, where she was joined a week ago by her family from the town of Palestine, West Virginia.

Colonel David Rubenstein, the military commander at the Landstuhl medical center, said Lynch had undergone operations for multiple injuries.

They included fractures to her right arm, both legs, her right foot and her right ankle, as well as head and spinal injuries, but not gunshot or knife wounds.

Now back in the United States, Lynch will convalesce at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where she will also receive psychological support.

SPACE.WIRE