|
Military father calls living conditions of U.S. soldiers "deplorable"
Ed Frawley's son returned from a 15 month mission in Afghanistan and now Ed has a mission of his own. After visiting Sgt. Jeff Frawley at the barracks of Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Ed took pictures of what one congressman is calling "deplorable conditions." "When you walk around Fort Bragg and you look around at these young men, you're looking at heroes, they humble you. When you go into these barracks, you're embarrassed. It's hard to look these guys in the eye," Ed Frawley said from his home in Menomonie, Wisconsin. In a narrative slide show post on youtube.com, Frawley talked about the images he took with his camera during his visit. The photos show broken toilet seats, lead-based paint chipping, mold on the ceilings and drain pipes stuffed with rags and Kleenex to keep sewer gases out of the barracks. In one photo, you see soldier in a bathroom sink, surrounded by 3 inches of brown water from drain back-up. "What matters here is we as Americans owe these guys way better than what they're getting right now," Frawley said. His YouTube post has had 32,000 hits in about 4 days, the number of viewers almost doubled on Sunday. "I've lived here for the past 3 1/2 years and that's the exact conditions that I have been in," Sgt. Jeff Frawley told reporters on Friday. North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole issued a statement: "Our service members deserve safe, clean housing. If this video posting accurately portrays living conditions for our soldiers, this is wholly unacceptable and it must be immediately corrected." Officials say the Airborne came home 3 or 4 weeks early. "Problems that they had been working through had not been solved before we got home," 82nd Airborne Unit Commander Jason Davis said. Construction crews are working on new barracks at Fort Bragg, but the 300 million dollar facilities are not ready yet. A spokesman for the 82nd says the barracks in the pictures are not reflective of the living conditions for the majority of soldiers returning home from war. Ed Frawley says he's heard plumbers have been in this weekend working on correcting some of the problems. Click here to see Ed Frawley's slide show
|
 MORE HEADLINES |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
