Edward Frawley couldn’t believe the conditions his son’s Army unit was
living in when they returned home two weeks ago from a 15-month tour of
duty in the remote mountains of Afghanistan.
Disgusted by the dilapidated Fort Bragg barracks, Frawley posted a video
on YouTube.
The video — made of a series of still photographs — shows paint peeling
and falling from exposed pipes, mildewed ceilings and showers, a toilet
seat torn in half and his son standing on a sink trying to unplug a
bathroom drain. Sewage appears to cover the bathroom floor.
“This is unbelievable,” Frawley says in the video. “It’s disgusting. It
makes me mad as hell. If these buildings were in any city in America and
were called apartments, dormitories, they would be condemned.”
In another segment of the video, Frawley says: “These solders spent 15
long, hard, difficult months in some of the most remote, dangerous areas
of the mountains of Afghanistan. They didn’t complain, they just did their
job. Now you are going to see what we did for them when they returned
home.”
Responding to the video Friday afternoon, Army officials allowed the media
to tour the barracks, which houses about 100 soldiers in the Charlie
Company of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute
Infantry Regiment.
The officials did not try to sugarcoat the conditions of the barracks. Tom
McCollum, a civilian spokesman for Fort Bragg, called the building — built
during the Korean War in the 1950s — “worn out.”
It will be replaced by May or June of next year with a six-story, $106
million high rise now under construction a short distance from the
barracks, said Col. Dave Fox, Fort Bragg’s garrison commander. The new
complex is part of a more than $2 billion barracks rebuilding project that
started in the 1990s.
Twenty of the Korean War-era barracks remain at Fort Bragg. Two have been
deemed unsafe for habitation because of mold. The others are still in use.
Fox, McCollum and other Army officials said part of the reason the
barracks in Frawley’s video looks so bad is that a large contingent of
Charlie Company returned home three weeks earlier than scheduled.
The barracks was undergoing repairs before they arrived on April 13, but
the work did not get done in time, McCollum said.
Soldiers — including some who just returned from Afghanistan — and
contractors spent the last 12 days scraping, painting and making other
cosmetic improvements, Fox said. He said the plumbing also has been
repaired.
Other than peeling paint in the bathrooms, the barracks looked much better
Friday than what was depicted on the video.
Sgt. Casey Craumer, who has lived in the barracks for 3 years, said it is
better now than when he left for Afghanistan. Craumer allowed reporters to
tour his room and showed off his new furniture and appliances. Fox said
the Army spent about $170,000 on new furnishings.
Other soldiers, including Jason Davis and Derek Gondek, shared Craumer’s
view but said the men in Charlie Company deserve much better
accommodations.
“There is nobody in my command that believes that this is anything more
than substandard housing,” Davis said.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole and U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge called the condition
of the barracks depicted in the video “unacceptable.”
“Our service members deserve safe, clean housing,” Dole said. “If this
video posting accurately portrays living conditions for our soldiers, this
is wholly unacceptable and it must be immediately corrected.”
Dole’s office contacted Army Secretary Pete Geren’s office to make it
aware of the video, Dole spokeswoman Amy Auth said.
“They said they are looking into it immediately,” she said.
Frawley’s son, Sgt. Jeff Frawley, attended the news conference. He said he
was unaware that his father was putting the video on the Internet, but he
called it an accurate depiction of the barrack’s condition when he
returned home.
“My father is very proud, and he thinks we deserve more than we are
actually receiving,” Jeff Frawley said.
He said he has lived in the barracks for more than three years and has
helped renovate it. After one renovation, he said, he deployed for four
months to come back and find the building in as bad as shape as before the
repairs were made.
Near Charlie Company’s worn out building, there stand row after row of new
brick barracks that were built within the last few years.
The new barracks have tile floors and recessed lighting in the lobby. A
pool table and a ping-pong table sit in the center. A kitchen area is off
to the side. Soldiers’ rooms are spacious and well-appointed, nothing like
the conditions of the old barracks.
The Army plans to raze all of the 1950s barracks and have all of its
soldiers into the new-style quarters by 2013, Fox said.
But until then, about 3,500 soldiers will apparently have to continue
living in the old, worn-out barracks.
An Army source said the 82nd has requested that soldiers living in the old
barracks be given housing allowances to move into private housing off post
until the new barracks are completed.
But so far, he said, the Army has been unwilling to grant the request,
which could cost millions of dollars.
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