National Defense

Soldiers Wounded In Iran War Reportedly Failed By Medical System

US Army Photo, Photo not from story

Dozens of soldiers wounded in a March 1 Iranian drone strike in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait are not receiving adequate medical care, according to an Associated Press report.

Bureaucratic red tape, failure to recognize serious injuries, and lack of planning regarding transporting the injured to hospitals are issues that service members deployed in the Middle East are facing, the AP reported Monday. After years of attempted troop drawdown in the Middle East, there are no major U.S.-run medical facilities in the region.

Army Lt. Col. Arturo Lincón was one of the multiple service members hit by shrapnel during the attack. One piece of metal lodged into his left jaw — while another sliced his salivary gland, bounced off his jaw, pierced the back of his neck, and ultimately severed an artery before lodging in a vertebrae, he told the AP. The damaged artery put him at risk for a stroke.

However, this was not considered severe enough for him to be sent to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the closest major military facility, the outlet reported. Instead, he was sent to nearby Army barracks and told to schedule outpatient appointments. He went days without pain medication.

“I was just kind of on my own, at least it felt like that,” Lincón told the AP.

“The care and well-being of our Soldiers is of the highest priority, and our medical professionals are prepared and postured to provide life-saving medical care on the front lines so that follow-on medical care may be executed in a timely manner for those who require it,” a War Department spokesman told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Any assertion that the Army seeks to downplay a Soldier’s injuries is simply not true. Soldiers wounded or otherwise injured during Operation Epic Fury received the care and treatment necessary in theater to return them to duty or evacuate them to a higher level of care outside of the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility,” the spokesman added.

The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Another soldier who had shrapnel removed from his head, Major Stephen Ramsbottom, had to wait over four months for his MRI results, according to the AP. Chief Warrant Officer 4 Rodney Bearman, who had shrapnel embedded from his face to his legs, was briefly seen by Kuwaiti doctors, then sent to the home of a U.S. government employee. The missile attacks from Iran made evacuation flights risky.

Approximately ten days after the attack, soldiers, including Bearman who could hardly eat or lie down, were loaded on a cargo plane bound for Germany, the outlet reported. Upon arrival in Germany, Bearman discovered that they were not documented as wounded in combat and would therefore not be hospitalized — allegedly, this was due to a coding error.

“Never did I think that if I was wounded that these things would happen … some sacred trust that I thought would never be broken was broken,” Bearman, who has served in the military for over three decades told the AP.