Members of the royal family live in well-kept residences and estates but according to a report, the same can’t be said for those who protect the monarch.
A story about the living conditions inside Wellington Barracks is causing controversy after photos show rooms with piles of garbage, urine-soaked toilets, and a moldy refrigerator. However, some say the report and images are misleading. Here’s more on what caused the uproar about the barracks where King Charles III’s royal guards live.
Where royal guards live
Wellington Barracks is a military barracks located 300 yards away from Buckingham Palace in London and houses members of the Coldstream, Grenadier, Irish, Scots, and Welsh Guards. The soldiers stationed there have the duty of protecting the monarch and the royal palaces.
Following Queen Elizabeth II’s death in September, many of those soldiers had roles in the state funeral and procession including eight pallbearers from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards who stayed at the barracks the night before her funeral.
Now, photos of what those barracks look like inside have shocked many people.
Soldiers called living conditions ‘worse than a prison’
On April 2, the Daily Mail published a report citing the accounts of personnel who were once stationed at the barracks along with images of vile living conditions.
The publication reported that one former Coldstream Guard said: “Prisoners in Britain have better living conditions than we do. Wellington Barracks is absolutely filthy but from the outside they look great. Tourists stand at the gates to take pictures, but they wouldn’t believe what life is like for soldiers inside.”
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The former guard also claimed to have left the Coldstream due to the horrific conditions explaining: “The rats would die in the bins, and we’d have to clean them out when doing block jobs in the morning. There are piles of rubbish inside the accommodation areas and the stench from the toilets is unbearable. All the problems are in the blocks where the privates live. I can promise you this would not happen in the officers block. I couldn’t take it anymore, it was worse than living in a filthy squat. I put up with it for several years, but nothing changed. The British public need to know how soldiers in this country are treated.”
Another soldier added that the living situation is a “joke” and complained that 32 privates live on each floor and have to share six toilets and two bathrooms between them.
Some have slammed the report as ‘misleading’
But not everyone is buying the report and have pointed out an inaccuracy with the photos.
Social media lit up with many saying the conditions in the quarters are the result of certain individuals not picking up after themselves. And others claimed that the photos in the article are old.
One Reddit user, who stated that he was previously stationed at the barracks, responded to the story writing: “I was based at Welly B at time of the photos being taken, which is 18 months ago. The gash all over the room was the result of a power hungry JNCO who threw rubbish bags all over the room just as the blokes were about to take it down to the bins, who then took photos of it to get the blokes bollocked … The images of gash in the corridors and sick on the toilets are immediate result of a block party, again taken nearly two years ago and posted in a Whatsapp group.
“What’s happened here is someone pouring through old work, group chats … nitpicking photos and then selling them onto a newspaper because he has an axe to grind.”
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