The story of living conditions aboard the USS Lincoln is like The Caine Mutiny on LSD. It truly beggars description and the descriptions we are getting from day to day depict a deployment which is inhumane and unlivable. Every service man or woman is entitled to a hot shower, good meals, sleep and clean uniforms at a bare minimum. The sailors aboard the Lincoln are getting none of that. Meidas Touch has been personally in touch with families of the sailors aboard the Lincoln and their depiction of conditions onboard are more in line with a mental institution out of control than any kind of a military sailing vessel.
… Early in the deployment, the ship’s water system went down entirely, leaving sailors unable to shower or wash their clothes. When the system was eventually restored, showers had to be tightly rationed. Supplies ran low repeatedly, made worse when resupply ships were unable to bring materials back to the carrier. By the time this sailor left the ship, the parent said, toilets had backed up and overflowed, leaving roughly half a foot of human waste across restroom floors used by around 200 sailors at any given time.
And incredibly, it gets worse.
… A separate message came from someone whose brother’s fiancée serves aboard the USS George H.W. Bush, a different carrier than the Lincoln. She was recently back in the U.S. for a family emergency and was able to describe conditions directly. “They have virtually no food, water, or soap,” the message relayed. “They’ve been out at sea for 136 days with no end in sight. Morale is low and everyone is miserable. It’s heartbreaking.”
… Finally, a wife of a service member currently aboard the Lincoln wrote to Meidas to say her husband, who has been following the coverage of conditions on the ship, told her they “desperately need more people to speak up about what is happening.”
… She said that when sailors ask their commanding officer for updates, they’ve been told not to worry about updates and to “just worry about today,” and that the crew is exhausted, getting no days off, and running on only a few hours of sleep. Her husband also raised serious concerns about leadership aboard the ship, telling her bluntly that “he doesn’t care about his people.” She said sailors with more than 20 years of service are calling this the worst deployment they’ve ever experienced.
… “I am sharing this because these sailors need someone to speak for them,” she wrote. “They are exhausted and feel like they are not being heard, and they desperately need help.”
… Trump was asked about the multiple media reports today about the Lincoln as he was about to board Air Force One to a rally in NY before heading to his country club at Bedminster for another weekend of golf: Q – “Family members of service members are concerned about conditions on the Lincoln. Trump: No they’re not. Reporter: Has the deployment gone on too long? Trump: No, no, no. Not nearly long enough. Thank you everybody.”
… He then walked away.
The thing I hate most about Donald Trump is when he shoots from the hip and has zero idea of what he’s talking about. Either Trump is being kept in the dark by both Pete Hegseth and Fox News, or he simply isn’t connecting the dots on his own.
This is yet another Trump comment that should be made into an attack ad in the months and weeks to come, prior to the midterm.
If I’m not mistaken they’ve passed 250 days at sea. Not even in sight of land. This didn’t happen in WWII even. Or in Vietnam. Carriers and other ships at ‘Yankee Station’ (waters off the coast of Vietnam out of range of any ground based fire) got a couple (sometimes more) port calls during a tour as I wrote yesterday.
Hegseth should have to be hauled up to NYC and locked into an enlisted berthing compartment (along with his staff) for a weekend. All of them forced to use a single ‘head’ (toilet), only be able to take a “Navy Shower” (you wet yourself down and turn off the water. Soap yourself, and turn the water back on just long enough to rinse and you’re done!) and eat food brought over from Riker’s island – that would be an approximation of what those on the Lincoln and too many other ships are getting these days.
THEN let’s hear him blather about how conditions aren’t an issue for those who’ve been stuck at sea for so long.
Also, how many GOOD officers has Petey Boy fired? Replaced with ship captains who think like him or don’t have the guts to speak up. Yes, it would mean the end of their career but they’d be ok with a nice retirement. Mark Kelly proved it’s possible to speak out and still retain full retiree benefits.
Even as an enlisted puke I learned from the beginning that even a lowly fire-team (the smallest ‘unit’ in the Corps is the infantry fire team consisting of four Marines) your first responsibility is to take care of your Marines before yourself. It’s something I never forgot and truly understood when I became an NCO.
Regardless of branch of service those in the ranks know damn well which leaders look out for them and which ones will sacrifice their well being to curry favor/promotion. There’s an old Navy saying that there’s lots of ways top NCOs and officers can impress their superiors but there’s only ONE way to impress a crew. It’s clear that on the Lincoln and other ships there’s an appalling lack of good leadership.