Soldiers face neglect, frustration, at army's top medical facility.

[Lady's Human]

Okay, enough.

I have had several friends from my unit go through Walter Reed, and NONE of them have complained about the care they were given there, either in the hospital itself or as outpatients.

If you want to point fingers at someone for this, ask congress why they hadn't given the military the money to repair or upgrade the facility. WRAMC has been on the BRAC list for years, and as such there is no money for facilities maintenance. Congress couldn't decide whether or not they wanted to close it, and the Army has gotten burned too many times for "scandals" because major renovations were done at a post that got closed. It was a running joke in the military in the '90s that if your post got a new comissary, start packing, the post is gone.

There isn't a post in the military that has enough money for proper housing. Base maintenance isn't cool, doesn't bring jobs or megabucks to congressman XYZ's political district, and you can't exactly make the front page for getting $$$ to renovate post housing at the local base. It has long been a sore spot in the military, and in the Army in particular.

Does that make WRAMC wonderful? No. This, however is not solely the fault of the current administration. The administration deserves credit for finally getting something done about it.

When they close military posts, you know what happens to the housing on base? 90% of it gets torn down, as it is substandard for section 8 requirements. No one wants it. The officers' quarters normally get sold, as they are the only ones that meet any kind of building code,. When FT. Devens in MA was closed, over 95% of the post housing was torn down. they kept 15 brick buildings from the oldest section of post. The rest was to the scrapheap.


The leasing of hotels off base to house soldiers in post operative care is thinking out of the box for the army. The WRAMC commander deserves credit for getting that done, and the former SecDef also had something to do with it.


As to the soldier's comments? Soldiers complain. Period. You could put a soldier in a suite at the luxor in Vegas for recovery, and they'd find something wrong. Add to the nature of most soldiers the fact that that most of them are going through treatment for psych injuries as well as physical injuries, and that alone explains some of the comments.