In October 1981, while reviewing a parade with many dignitaries from several nations, Anwar Sadat was assassinated. One of the trucks in the parade stopped in front of the reviewing stand. Men dressed as Egyptian soldiers threw flash-bangs into the reviewing party then opened fire with AK-47s. One of the shooters jumped from the truck, ran up to the reviewing stand, and fired point blank into the reviewing party. Some on the stand threw folding chairs over Sadat and his party to try to protect them from the rifle fire. Others huddled in the pre-natal position and prayed for a poor aim. There were many U.S. officers on the stand, including a Marine Three-Star and our boss at EUCOM, an Air Force Four-Star. Their usual assortment of horse-holders were there as well. The Aide to the Air Force General was wounded in his foot. The Marine General's Aide took one in the thigh. Neither General was wounded. The US officers who were not wounded were hustled off to the Air Field and immediately took off for safer places. The wounded were left to be taken to the military hospital in Cairo.
The Aides were put in the same room and were given emergency aid, bandaged, and then left alone. They could hear people crying and screaming and moaning. There was another wounded soldier in the room with them, but he wasn't making any noise; he had been dead before they arrived. The Aides were both in severe pain. Major Ryan, the Air Force Aide, had had an AK round go through his foot at point blank range. They put the foot in a cast (without any attempt to set the bones or even take an x-ray), elevated his leg and changed him into Egyptian pajamas. They put a cast on the Marine's leg as well, and gave him the same change of clothes and traction rig for his leg. As the afternoon turned into evening and no one came to check on them, they began to yell and throw things out into the hallway to try to get someone's attention. The Marine was having extreme pains in his thigh. The cast was apparently too tight and with his leg swelling, his foot was turning purple. It was late in the evening before anyone came into the room. An orderly was there to retrieve the dead patient. After a few minutes of hand signals and shouted threats, the orderly got the idea and fetched a doctor. He removed the cast from the Marine's leg and replaced it with a pressure bandage. He didn't do anything for Major Ryan. They were told that they needed care that couldn't be provided at that hospital. As soon as the "situation" was clear and stable, the Egyptians would try to get them to the Air Field and evacuate them to Italy or Germany. There was still the fear that the assassination was the prelude to a full-scale revolt; everyone was very edgy and no one was allowed to move around the city at all.
Major Ryan was growing concerned about his foot. His cast was softening from the inside and blood was starting to soak through to the outside. Blood was also trickling down his leg and drying under him. He was stuck to the bedding and his pajamas. It was about two days after the shooting that the two aides were loaded onto an airplane and flown to Landstuhl. The Egyptians had showed up in force on the morning they were to fly; the hospital room abuzz with doctors and orderlies. They had put a new cast on Maj Ryan (over the blood-soaked, smelly, itchy cast), a new dressing on the Marine, and put them onto transport gurneys, bloody sheets and all. At Landstuhl it took a couple hours of soaking to free the Major from his jammies and sheets.
The bullet had traveled across Ryan's foot at about the peak of his arch. All the bones between his ankle and his toes were shattered and pushed over to the exit side of his wound. The tissue around the breaks was shredded, swollen, and extremely painful. I am not sure how many surgeries were required to put his foot back together, but I do know that it was more than a year after the shooting before he was able to run again. He had been an avid runner before his trip to Egypt: marathons, mini-marathons, fun-runs, you name it. I don't know if he was ever able to get back to that activity level again. I never heard what all the Marine had to endure, but his bones were intact so it wasn't nearly as hard as Ryan had it. The delays Ryan endured nearly cost him his foot. He was being treated in the most up-to-date, quality hospital in Egypt. I know that this was an extreme situation, that the hospital was being stressed. They needed to come up with beds for the 30-plus wounded (and apparently the eleven dead bodies). But the constant presence of flies, roaches, and other vermin, the lack of any type of hygiene, the shortage of care providers and cleaning personnel, and the general malaise of the medical staff were not a product of this emergency, they were the business-as-usual operating procedures at that facility.
While you listen to the debate raging over the need to change our health care system; while you are inundated with reasons our system is soooo screwed up; while you hear politicians who appoint themselves to the status of subject-matter experts on medical treatment tell us that the new system won't cost us an arm and a leg...or a foot...ask yourself this. Which system do you think Chris Ryan would prefer...what we have here and now or the socialized system they have in Egypt? If you think that this is irrelevant to today's debate, you are wrong. While our system may not be perfect, it is a quantum leap past most of the rest of the world.