The horrific conditions onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have been revealed in a series of anonymous text messages from a sailor.
It was reported on Wednesday that several service members had attempted to go overboard during the extended deployment, which is now in its ninth month, having joined the war with Iran when it was first launched and remaining there ever since.
The vessel had been due to return in May, and since then families of those on board have raised concerns about poor conditions and the ramifications for their loved ones’ wellbeing. They’ve now been laid bare in the new texts.
“This deployment is the worst one and I pray no other boat goes through the same,” one crew member wrote to their partner in messages obtained by MeidasTouch.
“Even people that have been deployed a hundred times claim this one to be the worst and believe it can get worse than this,” they wrote in a separate text. “The Navy does not care. The mission will always come first.”
They also sent a picture of what appeared to be dry cereal, with a message saying the sailor hadn’t “had milk in 3 months.”
When asked why they hadn’t had any milk, they replied: “It takes so long for supplies to arrive, nothing fresh is included.”
“So the supply ship that comes here can’t bring fruits and stuff cause it can’t stay fresh long enough with the time it gets them to get here. So we haven’t had anything fresh but meat cause it’s freezed. Sometimes it gets here rotten.”
Some 200 family members attended a meeting in San Diego with Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, who reassured them that a USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group was being readied to relieve the crew on the Lincoln. However, no timeline was given.
The Military Times reported Wednesday that multiple families back home had received messages relating to attempts from sailors to go overboard.
“Based on information available to the command, we have not identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation or suicide attempts aboard the ship,” a Navy spokesperson said in a statement to Newsweek. “We take every service member’s well-being seriously and have religious, medical and mental health professionals available to assess and address concerns as they arise.”
The crisis has led to concern in Congress, with Sen. Richard Blumenthal writing a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that said, “There have been widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages in route to the ship to be lost in transit for months.
“These reports warrant immediate attention, but they also raise a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force, particularly as this Administration repeatedly commits U.S. forces to conflicts of its own choosing and increasingly relies on aircraft carriers to sustain those operations.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said, “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are committed to ensuring that the brave American patriots serving our country in uniform are equipped with the resources necessary to counter any threat to the United States.”
The Pentagon referred the Beast to the Navy.
