Son of Walter Reed (RO)

The BBQ Pit
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In case you missed it, this is currently breaking news. A few days ago a dad posted a video showing the poor conditions of the barracks his son returned to upon getting back from Afghanistan. In truth, I have seen worse. But we all ought to be at least a little concerned that DEH and the rear detachment couldn’t have refurbished barracks ready for returning units.

Also says something about the power of the internet. Already CNN and Army Times has picked it up. The Vice Chief has promised action, all from one video less than a week old.

The Bragg PAO site seems to be down or swamped (or my Saudi internet is acting up again). Still I bet nobody loses a job or misses promotion because of it. Got to have priorities after all.

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I get “The URL contained a malformed video ID” when I click the link.

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[QUOTE=dbuzman]
I get “The URL contained a malformed video ID” when I click the link.
[/QUOTE]

Guess conditions must be really bad, then.

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Heh. It’s the <br /> in the link that messed it up.

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I saw that video yesterday. It’s pretty disgusting.

It’s not like these wars started yesterday. We’ve been in Iraq for five years, in Afghanistan for six and a half. And these guys coming back from Afghanistan were promised new barracks three years ago, I believe is what the father said.

And just hours after getting back from Afghanistan, they’re in this deteriorating dorm with mold growing everywhere, and bathrooms flooding with yellow and brown water.

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Who’s job is it, physically, to clean up that sort of thing? Does the military have soldiers do it? Are the conditions so bad because everyone has been sent away and there’s no one to clean the toilets or keep out the mold? And do they/can they not hire outside contractors to do it (if they actually had the money)

I am not asking for a debate or trying to point fingers…I am just curious here.

7

Just watched the 10-minute video. Ugh, that is horrible. I feel really bad for those poor soldiers. I gotta hand it to the dad who made the video - he did a wonderful job in putting it together and narrating the presentation. I just cannot believe that these soldiers can’t be given decent living conditions. They deserve so much better…

Just think of all the billions they’re spending on the wars in the Middle East, and we can’t spend a fraction of that to give our service people a decent place to live when they come back from 18 months of service? Shameful.

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[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
It’s not like these wars started yesterday. We’ve been in Iraq for five years, in Afghanistan for six and a half. And these guys coming back from Afghanistan were promised new barracks three years ago, I believe is what the father said.

And just hours after getting back from Afghanistan, they’re in this deteriorating dorm with mold growing everywhere, and bathrooms flooding with yellow and brown water.
[/QUOTE]

I think you’re missing a bigger picture here.

Until fairly recently, you could drive onto any military base and see these wonderful construction projects for military family housing, while barracks projects for single military members lagged way behind.

It was worse if you were in the Navy, where until the mid-1990s it was assumed that if you were on sea duty you had a bed on the ship to sleep in.

Just changing the rules for living off the ship or changing standards for new barracks so every soldier gets his own bedroom wasn’t enough - the barracks had to actually be built. And in a military that has never made single soldiers or sailors any kind of priority, this wasn’t rushed.

For my part, when the rules changed around 1997 to permit me a housing allowance, I used that to get an apartment with a couple of other guys from the ship. Trying to get a barracks room in Norfolk would have been impossible at that time - there just weren’t enough to go around.

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Just to let you know, I found this:

The good news is that we’re well into that 23 years now - we should have this wrapped up in a decade. :rolleyes:

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[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]

The good news is that we’re well into that 23 years now - we should have this wrapped up in a decade. :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]

It’s the government.

A private developer can put up an apartment building 30 stories high that will house its occupants in comfort for decades, and do it in less than a year.

Put the same thing into the government’s hands and it takes 23 years, will be vastly overbudget, and by the time they’re done the first ones they built will be falling apart.

The soldiers aren’t paying customers, so nobody in power gives a shit what they think.

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Lots of people care about these barracks now.

Here is the corrected link (I think).

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[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
I think you’re missing a bigger picture here.

Until fairly recently, you could drive onto any military base and see these wonderful construction projects for military family housing, while barracks projects for single military members lagged way behind.
[/QUOTE]
This is shameful - treating single soldiers in such a substandard manner compared to married soldiers. That’s discriminatory, based on marital status!!

And that 23-year thing - the whole thing disgusts me. :mad:

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In building barracks, the military uses the 90% rule. They build enough housing for 90% of the people who need a bed. Then they build housing for 90% of the remaining number and so on.

I could be using that brain-space for valuable Simpsons references.

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[QUOTE=nyctea scandiaca]
This is shameful - treating single soldiers in such a substandard manner compared to married soldiers. That’s discriminatory, based on marital status!!
[/QUOTE]

It is pretty hard for soldiers to sue for discrimination based on marital status. But if they could, I doubt barracks conditions would be the subject of the lawsuit - the fact that married military members make a lot more money than single ones is a far bigger complaint.

This PDF chart shows some of the allowance differences between married and unmarried members. Note the housing differences and the family separation allowance. The family separation allowance is only paid to you if you are deployed and you have dependents.

Other housing allowances are location based, but even they are pinned to marital or parental status. For instance, an E-5 single Marine in Quantico would get $985 as a housing allowance - his married counterpart at the same paygrade would get $1281. And keep in mind allowances aren’t treated as income - this is tax free money, which exacerbates the discrepancy.

In no other job in this country do we ask single people to accept a lower salary than married ones - but we do this to single sailors and soldiers and Marines and airmen all of the time. What’s more, this pay chart is federal law - it gets approved by Congress every time it gets changed.

And this isn’t the only complaint, mind. It took a long time for simple reforms like “beeper duty” and phone lists to make their way into the mindset of the chain of command. Prior to that, if there was a problem at night or on the weekend, a chief would just head to the barracks and round up whoever he could to take care of it - all while the married guys in town slept soundly.

Any fairly recent veteran can tell you that the military doesn’t really treat single people fairly. And while they are trying to fix this, I don’t thing this is exactly successful across the board.

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And just another point that needs to be made:

I certainly am not unhappy that this video was made and that this is being addressed. But I lived through this myself in the 1990s - right down to the oceans of shitwater flooding our head on the ship. It once got so bad it overflowed the door leading into the berthing space - a door set about 5 inches off of the deck for just this reason - and contaminated the belongings of a few sailors in our division who had lower bunks with “coffin lockers” below them.

And while the military is now doing its level best to provide that 110 square feet per member, when I first got sea duty I was expected to live on the ship, where nobody except the captain and XO gets 110 square feet.

And do you know what? There was no war on then either.

And yet some posters who come into this thread complaining of these conditions (and rightly so) automatically jump to the whole Middle East angle. As if a military that had shoddy barracks before the war started would be expected to have great ones by now. A moment’s reflection ought to remind us that the opposite is likely true - during a war, construction projects like these are likely to be deferred.

I know it is unlikely that most of you knew of these problems before this video or this war - but maybe you ought to ask yourself why that is so. I will admit that this is not a well known problem, but I think my cites demonstrated that it certainly is a longstanding one.

The American people and the media say they support the troops, but that support is pretty shallow. If there isn’t a war on, nobody really cares about barracks conditions and you won’t see any stories about them. The information is there, available for anyone to find (as above) but the reporters and politicians and voters do not care. At all.

Now, of course, there is a video - and videos make good press. If this man hadn’t had the foresight to take these pictures and make this montage, the press would have just yawned again, as it has for fifteen years or more.

That’s the other scandal here. Don’t expect the press to report on it.

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[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
The American people and the media say they support the troops, but that support is pretty shallow. If there isn’t a war on, nobody really cares about barracks conditions and you won’t see any stories about them. The information is there, available for anyone to find (as above) but the reporters and politicians and voters do not care. At all.
[/QUOTE]

You’re behind the times. “Supporting X” is now defined as “putting a ribbon sticker on my car/rubber band on my wrist/pin on my lapel advocating X”.

Can’t solve your crisis with a ribbon? Sweep it under the carpet, then.

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[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
And just another point that needs to be made…
[/QUOTE]

And very well made it was.

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[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]

I know it is unlikely that most of you knew of these problems before this video or this war - but maybe you ought to ask yourself why that is so. I will admit that this is not a well known problem, but I think my cites demonstrated that it certainly is a longstanding one.

The American people and the media say they support the troops, but that support is pretty shallow. If there isn’t a war on, nobody really cares about barracks conditions and you won’t see any stories about them. The information is there, available for anyone to find (as above) but the reporters and politicians and voters do not care. At all.

Now, of course, there is a video - and videos make good press. If this man hadn’t had the foresight to take these pictures and make this montage, the press would have just yawned again, as it has for fifteen years or more.

That’s the other scandal here. Don’t expect the press to report on it.
[/QUOTE]

And that’s the fault of the press–I feel for these service men and women and deplore the inequities related here, but I refuse to be reprimanded for ignorance. I have no active military people in my family (the last one was my dad who served in the Navy, but he was a doctor so had a different experience than an enlisted person).

Would you mind telling me how I’m supposed to be current on these matters? Do you honestly think that in my busy days that I’m going to surf to Army.com etc? Do you peruse the sites of the Joint Commission or Nursing advocacy sites? Get real.

Seems to me to be a lack of publicity, and for that I place blame on officers and the administrators, not the service men and women. I’ve never tried to do this, but I’ll bet I can’t just walk onto a naval training base or similar. The military is this unseen, unheard part of America. Sure, we see the pics (but god forbid we see coffins) and hear of casualities, but the conditions within the military are not easily found (the lack of armor got plenty of attention and rightly so).

I own no ribbon for my car. I find such things silly. I do support the troops and am concerned about vet benefits, especially mental health care, which is bad and getting worse. But I’d really like to know just what you expect me, a suburban soccer working mother to do here. I can write my senator and congressman. What else can I do? Don’t be so quick to judge that lack of knowledge equals lack of concern or support. IMO, it’s up to people like this dad with the video or maybe an officer who would advocate for his troops (there’s a concept), and then it’s up to us, the people, to put pressure on Congress to change allotments etc.

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[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
And that’s the fault of the press–I feel for these service men and women and deplore the inequities related here, but I refuse to be reprimanded for ignorance.
[/QUOTE]

The press will report on what it thinks its readers and viewers are interested in.

I’m not singling anyone in particular out here - to my mind the problem here is a general one.

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[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
I do support the troops and am concerned about vet benefits, especially mental health care, which is bad and getting worse. But I’d really like to know just what you expect me, a suburban soccer working mother to do here. I can write my senator and congressman. What else can I do?
[/QUOTE]

This is a fair question. I’m going to give you a fair answer.

First of all, I think it is great that you care about vet benefits, and I won’t fault you for caring about them. However, I will point out that caring about them isn’t a particularly risky political position. That is why politicians with lousy records about actually doing anything for active-duty troops will support any veterans measure that comes down the pike - it gives them nice cheap political cover.

These barracks won’t be affected by advocating for more veterans benefits. How can they be - these guys aren’t veterans yet?

Apart from medical services provided by the VA - which you can only access if you have service related medical issues or are indigent - veterans benefits aren’t that extensive. They include the VA home loan, certain educational benefits, certain preferences in federal hiring (though most veterans don’t get much preference) and a burial benefit. Lots of these are left unclaimed - the veteran just never needs them in his life. Meantime, the active-duty soldier deals with hardships described in the OP, and for low pay to boot.

I think focusing on vet benefits only is wrong. We should look at everything from military pay to military benefits to the travesty that is the military retirement system. (Just to let you know how screwed up this one is - until 2001 military members couldn’t participate in the Thrift Savings Plan. That meant that you had to serve a full 20 years to get any kind of retirement - bail out before this time and you don’t get a dime. Not to mention the fact that the traditional military retirement has been made less attractive in the last generation or so.)

Complex? Sure. It’s so complex it’s fucked up in a hundred different ways. And honestly, I don’t expect everybody to know how bad it is. Maybe the best that can be hoped for is that when stories like this come out people aren’t so surprised - they just see that this is an ongoing problem that is either getting better or worse.

Maybe like the stories I hear about the nursing shortage. Or changes in education. Or farm policy. Or everything.

But if you’re not in a military town - you’re right, you hear nothing about how military members live. The press can’t be roused to find out. And that’s unfortunate.