No Relief in Sight for the Lincoln

I had a fellow Naval Academy Alumni call this column to my attention: “No Relief in Sight for the Lincoln” by Ed Stanton (a pen name for a career Naval office aboard the U.S.S. Lincoln).

It has been three weeks since my ship, the USS Abraham Lincoln, arrived off the Sumatran coast to aid the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami that ravaged their coastline. I’d like to say that this has been a rewarding experience for us, but it has not: Instead, it has been a frustrating and needlessly dangerous exercise made even more difficult by the Indonesian government and a traveling circus of so-called aid workers who have invaded our spaces.

What really irritated me was a scene I witnessed in the Lincoln’s wardroom a few days ago. I went in for breakfast as I usually do, expecting to see the usual crowd of ship’s company officers in khakis and air wing aviators in flight suits, drinking coffee and exchanging rumors about when our ongoing humanitarian mission in Sumatra is going to end.

What I saw instead was a mob of civilians sitting around like they owned the place. They wore various colored vests with logos on the back including Save The Children, World Health Organization and the dreaded baby blue vest of the United Nations. Mixed in with this crowd were a bunch of reporters, cameramen and Indonesian military officers in uniform. They all carried cameras, sunglasses and fanny packs like tourists on their way to Disneyland.

My warship had been transformed into a floating hotel for a bunch of trifling do-gooders overnight. READ ON...

As the officer-in-charge of an aviation detachment supporting hydrographic survey work in Indonesia, I had the opportunity to see Indonesian military officers at their best and at their worst. In their support, the good officers I had the chance to work with were very good, but the bad ones were far worse than you could ever find in the U.S. military--on the other hand, even the worst of them were far better than the Somali officers my colleagues in the other survey support detachment had to work with (back in the days when Somalia still had a functional government). The good Indonesian officers and government officials were genuinely concerned about the well being of the citizens in their charge and I hope Mr. Stanton has the opportunity to encounter some of them. And carrying civilians about in Naval helicopters is always a thankless and dangerous task, even when they are U.S. Navy civilians such as the civil servants we used to ferry about, so I hope these guys keep their chins up and look at the good they are accomplishing despite all of the useless human cargo they are moving hither and yon.

Posted by Ray Trygstad | Category: Navy | 10:41 AM