Army reacts after video reveals shoddy barracks

From Iraq to a ‘pigsty’
Soldiers at Fort McCoy, a sprawling World War II-era base in western Wisconsin now used for short-term Guard and Reserve training, stay in two-story wooden barracks dating to 1942. Fewer than half of the 276 barracks have been renovated or modernized.

Guard Master Sgt. Patrick Robinson, 55, of Wausau, Wis., saw peeling paint, missing floor tiles and clogged shower drains during his many training missions at the base. "You couldn't pay me to go into the shower rooms without shower shoes on," he said.

A few years ago Robinson, 55, refused to sleep in the barracks after opening a window and getting dead flies blown onto his bed. In 2006, he returned from Iraq to moldy barracks he said looked like a "pigsty."

Dauterman said she never complained about the Fort McCoy conditions. "We are in the Army and we accept many things about it. We are just accustomed to it," she said.

‘Nothing to complain about,’ colonel says
The Wisconsin Guard soldiers' commander, Col. Hillis Tinglum, said the barracks are acceptable given the short nature of training stays there. Compared with the conditions soldiers encounter in the Middle East, "We have nothing to complain about in staying in barracks like these," Tinglum said.

The Army aims to have new or renovated barracks housing for 147,700 enlisted soldiers within five years, according to Ned Christensen, chief of public affairs for the Army Installation Management Command. The Army doesn't have a total for all its barracks spending, but Christensen estimated that between 2004 and 2013, the construction cost for new barracks complexes will amount to $10.7 billion.

Stephen Morton / Getty Images The Army showed of modular barracks at Fort Stewart, Ga., during a media tour of some of the 7,688 living areas for soldiers at the post.

The Pentagon also gives troops more financial incentive to rent or buy housing in communities near their base rather than stay on base. Monthly allowances that vary according to a soldier's location, rank and dependents have been increased substantially in recent years.

But for those living on base, the conditions can be grim.

Ed Frawley, who shot the video of the Fort Bragg barracks after his son, Sgt. Jeff Frawley, came back from Afghanistan, said his son had lived in those barracks since he joined the Army in 2004. The Army said the younger Frawley isn't talking to reporters.

"He said it was depressing," the father said, "because you work all day and then you have to go back to these barracks."

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