It抖阴ap been 58 years now since I last paused to salute the colors, then stepped ashore from the USS Bon Homme Richard, never to board her again. I still had a year left to do elsewhere in the Navy, so my thoughts then were all focused on what was coming next, and nostalgia played no part in that parting.
Yet, as I walked away, I sensed something far bigger than myself, of which I鈥檇 only been an infinitesimal part, was silently slipping away.
The vessel I was then departing was only the second ship in U.S. Navy history to bear the name of the warship John Paul Jones famously sailed in 1779 to defeat the British frigate Serapis during the American Revolution. In the two years I鈥檇 served aboard her — 1967 and 1968 鈥� she鈥檇 continued to honor that name by later receiving the Presidential Unit Citation from President Nixon in 1972, becoming one of only three ships in the entire U.S. Navy 鈥� all aircraft carriers 鈥� to receive that highest unit honor during the Vietnam War.
So it later came as no surprise that nostalgia for my old ship — long since decommissioned in 1971 and later broken up for scrap in 1992 鈥� did eventually creep back in. Connecting with a long-separated fellow sailor via Facebook introduced me to the vessel鈥檚 Shipmates Association, which holds annual reunions. And their most recent, of which I was a part, convened late last month in Colorado Springs.
But at this year鈥檚 gathering, nostalgia was overshadowed by the plight of our successor brothers and sisters serving at sea aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, who have had to continually suffer extreme hardships no previous U.S. Navy vessel has ever been asked or expected to endure.
Lacking any embedded news media aboard the ship, their plight has only slowly seeped out through messages home shared by family members, or leaked reports of multiple suicide attempts, later confirmed by the acting secretary of the Navy. But for those of us gathered for our own ship鈥檚 reunion, what we were hearing had a certain familiar ring. We鈥檇 all been there before.
The same dilemmas bedeviling the Abraham Lincoln have always gnawed at the core morale of every naval vessel that抖阴ap ever departed on a lengthy cruise beyond its homeport抖阴ap horizon. And the Bon Homme Richard was certainly no exception to that reality, despite our highly honored Vietnam War performance. We, too, had similar suicide attempts, suffered abrupt schedule changes that wreaked havoc on crew families, and at times even complained about the food.
The difference, however, was that in our day, the Navy leadership, in the form of highly experienced officers (many with sea time from World War II), understood this fact of seagoing life. Backed up by an extensive network of supportive facilities ashore, they did everything possible to — if not alleviate 鈥� at least mitigate the effects of such stresses on their ships’ crew.
In Vietnam, three aircraft carriers shared the workload at Yankee Station, our operational base area in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam. Having that flexibility meant the Bon Homme Richard never spent more than forty days at sea during both my deployments aboard her.
Yankee Station was less than a thousand miles away from the Navy鈥檚 massive complex at Subic Bay in the Philippines (now long closed), which we visited often for up to a week at a time. That base offered numerous recreational opportunities — beaches, playing fields, golf courses, movie theaters, restaurants and bars 鈥� many of which were located on an island at the harbor鈥檚 entrance solely devoted to R&R. It was even surrounded by abundant coral wonderfully suited for snorkeling.
And beyond Subic Bay, the ship would make at least one R&R port call at either Hong Kong or Singapore in the course of each deployment, where the crew spent a lot of time and money shopping.
In fact, upon departing Singapore in 1968, the Bon Homme Richard even detoured for several hours in the opposite direction from Vietnam, so we could sail just far enough south to make a U-turn over the equator, before heading back to the war zone. That enabled all those aboard who had never done so — about 2,800 of us pollywogs 鈥� to later be initiated into the Ancient Order of the Deep by becoming shellbacks, which for me personally was the greatest morale boost of my entire time in uniform.
In stark contrast, the USS Abraham Lincoln has enjoyed almost none of these recuperative opportunities during their present cruise. For starters, it has deployed about as far away on Earth from homeland support as a U.S. Navy vessel can possibly get. That makes the global supply chain to constantly replenish its provisions of food, munitions and aviation fuel a complex enough logistical problem even without a war to wage.
But three months into their deployment to patrol Middle Eastern troubled waters, the president抖阴ap abrupt decision to attack Iran propelled the ship into hostile waters. It immediately became the Navy鈥檚 primary spearhead of the war. Iran responded by attacking U.S. logistical facilities in the Persian Gulf area, effectively eliminating the Navy鈥檚 most important support base for all its ships in the area, while making supply routes to replenish them even more fraught with disruption. And Iran鈥檚 broadside attacks against multiple countries in the area meant no port was safe for the Lincoln to visit. Without any other aircraft carrier nearby on station to share the burden of the war, her likelihood of setting a new duration record of continuous days at sea was very much assured.
It抖阴ap longevity events like this that pose the greatest threat to crew stability at sea, especially when they come unexpectedly and continue unabated.
When there are no port calls, and the ship鈥檚 progress is only measured in time spent 鈥榦n station鈥� in one general position, the whole cruise concept evaporates, replaced instead by a feeling akin to being on a far-off satellite in geostationary orbit where time has effectively stopped, and you鈥檝e been forgotten.
And the one thing all the Navy鈥檚 ocean stations seem to have in common is always being out of sight of land. Now while the unimpeded breadth of an ocean horizon viewed from on shore can inspire a sense of unlimited freedom — an emotion commercial cruise ship companies play up heavily in their advertising 鈥� when that horizon comprises a full 360 degrees, the effect can be the reverse. It can become a fence surrounding a tighter and tighter enclosure that gets higher and higher with each passing day.
It抖阴ap comforting that the Abraham Lincoln has been relieved and is finally about to make its long-delayed arrival back in San Diego. But it抖阴ap lamentable that the circumstances of serving on the station she once occupied haven鈥檛 changed; with her relief, the USS George Washington is now the sole carrier on duty there, and potentially facing a record-breaking deployment of similar duration as well.
In our reunion gathering last month, many of us expressed concern about the hardships the USS Abraham Lincoln has experienced in conducting the same sort of combat operations lately that we engaged in 50 to 60 years ago.
And as an organization, we unanimously consented to send their crew a declaration of our admiration for their performance under extreme hardship, encouragement that they have the full support of their predecessors from past generations, and sincere hope and good wishes for their safe return to the same pier in San Diego that the Bon Homme Richard called her home port for most of her operational life.
Roger Archibald is a freelance photographer and writer based near Boston who also directs the , an effort to replicate photography produced by the Environmental Protection Agency in its early years to depict the country as it then appeared. He鈥� worked as a National Park ranger, Forest Service smokejumper and field representative for the Consumer Price Index. Besides making two combat deployments to Vietnam aboard the USS Bon Homme Richard in 1967-68, he completed his final year of active duty as a U.S. Navy electronics technician 2nd class ashore in Vietnam at the Naval Communications Station Cam Ranh Bay and aboard Operation Seafloat, a floating combat support base anchored deep in the Mekong River delta.
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