Ellis Williams, who was sitting in the front passenger, seat was the only "walking wounded" survivor of the crash.

And now many of these mostly small and mid-sized walking wounded could soon be facing their day of reckoning, with due dates looming on hundreds of billions of dollars of loans they may not be able to pay back.

"I think that he indulged in some monstrous behaviour without ever quite being a monster himself, but more like the walking wounded," he says.

But right now, they note, so many of the nation's buildings, bridges, tunnels and dams are among the walking wounded that the first priority should be setting up a triage system.

"All of these patients had life-critical injuries - amputations; horrific wounds that needed immediate attention. We were held for over two hours at the checkpoint. The walking wounded were forced at gunpoint from the ambulance and again were stood in the sand to be profiled by the IDF," Mr Morland recalls.