Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran.<\/p>\n
Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times<\/a> and the Stars and Stripes<\/a>, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land \u2013 a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.<\/p>\n Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes<\/a> reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying \u201che hopes he doesn\u2019t wake up tomorrow\u201d.<\/p>\n The families\u2019 worries were expressed directly to navy leadership, represented at the town hall by the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, and other top officials.<\/p>\n A woman at the meeting told Cao that the navy had \u201cbroken trust between us and the leadership\u201d, the paper reported.<\/p>\n The Navy Times gave details<\/a> of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s scared. He thinks he\u2019ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The paper quoted another sailor\u2019s wife who was involved in a separate incident on board the Lincoln in which he prevented a fellow crew member from jumping, grabbing them and bringing them back on deck.<\/p>\n Mike Levin, a Democratic member of congress from California, has sounded the alarm over conditions onboard the warship which is in its fifth month of combat operations against Iran. He described the lot of the crew on X<\/a> as \u201cmoldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks, long stretches with no hot water, a meal that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. No soap, deodorant, or toothpaste.\u201d<\/p>\n Jason Crow, a Democratic congress member from Colorado who is a former army ranger having served in Aghanistan and Iraq, has warned<\/a> that the strain on our service members and their families\u201d on the Lincoln is \u201cbuilding week by week\u201d.<\/p>\n The current crunch has been months in the making. The warship left San Diego on 21 November and was originally intended for the Pacific but was redirected to the Middle East once the US-Israel war with Iran began.<\/p>\n Since then, MS Now revealed<\/a>, the 5,000-plus crew has had only two days on land, in Guam in December and Oman in July. The deployment was scheduled to end in May but has been extended a couple of times amid the ongoing war.<\/p>\n In April there was a flurry of public criticism about dire conditions onboard the carrier. Photos emerged of poor quality and rationed food<\/a>, and there were reports of water shortages, moldy showers and broken laundry machines.<\/p>\n