The U.S. military is promising action to address conditions in a barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after a soldier’s father posted images on YouTube showing a building that he said “should be condemned.”
“This is embarrassing. It’s disgusting. It makes me mad as hell,” Ed Frawley said of the building where his son, Sgt. Jeff Frawley, had to live upon his return this month from a 15-month deployment to Afghanistan.
Frawley said Monday that Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody called him to say he shares Frawley’s anger and that “there’s no excuse.” Cody said he would not want his own sons or any troops to return to such conditions, Frawley said.
Frawley’s 10-minute video shows still photos from throughout the building, which appears to be falling apart and filled with mold and rust.
Paint — which Frawley said is lead-based — is chipping. Ceiling tiles are missing. A broken drain pipe allows sewer gas into the building, while another one has tissues stuffed into it in an apparent effort to stop the gas from coming in.
Photos from the communal bathroom show some of the most disgusting images. In one, a soldier stands in a sink to avoid what Frawley describes as 3 inches of sewage water that filled the floor when toilets overflowed.
After Viet Nam our military was savaged by the government and took years and billions to rebuild, After Iraq, does anyone really think that the willingness to bring everyone home abruptly and pare down the military won’t also result in crappy conditions?
I would not expect the infrastructure to be repaired any time soon.
My son was deployed to Bagram in December of 2001. At that time, the handful of military personnel there didn’t have showers, barracks, or the minimal basic comforts to provide for daily living. They dug their own latrines out of the frozen ground, erected tents, popped sterno – when available – to heat “MREs.” It was months later when the Brits, French and other military support arrived that they were able to exchange food packs. These early forces cleared the area of buried unexploded mines, erected a small base for the increasing number of arriving troops. Eventually, conditions began to right themselves – not to perfection, but livability.
It is appaling to read about the conditions at Ft. Bragg. I agree that “the infrastructure may not be repaired anytime soon,” but only hope at some point in our history we will evolve enough civily to understand that some of the reconstruction money being poured into Irag be spent on our own bases here at home. At least, let’s give our military personnel livability before we send them off to clean up some other mess.
Been there done that. That Hot water problem has been that way for over 20 years. It was that way ehen I was in the 82nd. in fact we flushed the toilets on one NCO that was being a pain. When I got there about half of the rooms didn’t have A/C. Real nice in a NC Summer. The military doesn’t take care of its people. They haven’t in a long time. And they wonder why recruitment is so tough.
BFD. When I was a paratrooper, we were housed in wooden, non-airconditioned, open bay, WWII barracks.
Boo fricken hoo
Come on, somebody’s dad needs to go video some of the living conditions on aircraft carriers… now that was horrendous.
Why are the soldiers not doing the usual barracks cleaning and painting? We did it in the Navy. Not the plumbing or electrical work but daily maintenance was done by us. Also why haven’t the Army big wigs there done anything before this. As far as not hearing from your son for a month–think back to the ww1 & ww2. Our folks didn’t hear from sons/daughters for months.