COLORADO SPRINGS - Failed equipment, staff negligence and command arrogance plagued a wounded Fort Carson soldier's unsuccessful fight for life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a congressman said at a hearing this week.

Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., said he only went public with the information after the parents of Staff Sgt. William Latham, from Fort Carson's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, asked him to.

He spoke during a subcommittee hearing of the House Appropriations Committee, which is looking into treatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed and other Army hospitals.

Latham, 29, of Kingman, Ariz., was in the first Fort Carson unit to deploy to Iraq in April 2003.

He was struck in the head by shrapnel during a raid on suspected arms caches in Ramadi on May 19, 2003.

He was airlifted to Kuwait, then to Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany, then to Walter Reed, where he died on June 18.

"Medical corps at Walter Reed made the decision that Staff Sgt. Latham needed some emergency surgery to fix the aneurysm in his brain before it killed him," Young said.

But the key piece of equipment they needed, the catheterization lab, was broken.

Young said he "could hardly believe" that the Army's premier hospital would lack functioning essential equipment at the height of a war.

Young said his wife, who volunteers with him to help wounded soldiers' families at Walter Reed, drove to Bethesda Naval Medical Center and found an operative cath lab.

She had the Bethesda commander call Walter Reed's commander, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now surgeon general of the Army.

"He talked to Gen. Kiley and said, 'We can fix this. We have the equipment; it's up and running. We'll send an ambulance and bring him over,' " Young said. "Now Adm. Arthur says that he was told, 'No, we're not going to do that. We can take care of our own, and we think it's too dangerous to move him.' "

Latham's father, Sid, an -Army veteran himself, can hardly contain his rage at the Army's treatment of his son.

"This is nothing but a turf war between the Army and the Navy, and I'm not saying the Navy had anything to do with it.

"But that Kiley, his attitude was, 'I am in charge. I am the general. You don't have a thing to say about anything,' " Latham said Thursday from his home in Arizona.

A day after Latham was refused transfer to Bethesda, a respiratory therapist came to his room.

Latham's wife, Melissa, warned that her husband had an aneurysm and a tube in his brain and the therapy could be dangerous.

The therapist checked the chart and told her, "There's no mention of the aneurysm, and the directions are to do physical therapy," Young said.

"The therapist started to pound on his back, and it was at that point huge amounts of blood came shooting out of that tube, out of his brain."

Latham died a few days later.

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