The Everett-based USS Abraham Lincoln won’t be coming home in February as planned, and the Navy won’t say yet when the aircraft carrier will return.
In fact, all the ships in the Lincoln’s strike group, including the Everett-based destroyer USS Shoup, had their deployments extended indefinitely on Thursday.
The Lincoln, a Nimitz-class carrier with a crew of more than 5,000, left Everett in October along with the Shoup for a four-month deployment.
Since the beginning of the month, however, the Lincoln strike group has been in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, Indonesia, assisting with the tsunami disaster relief effort.
“The Abraham Lincoln has indeed been extended on deployment, and it would be inappropriate to speculate on the ship’s return,” Navy Cmdr. John Bernard, spokesman for U.S. naval forces in Indonesia, said in an e-mail to The Herald.
“The Navy understands sailors and their families’ desires to be reunited and is working toward that end,” Bernard added. “However, the people of Indonesia have suffered an unprecedented disaster and are counting on the sailors of the Lincoln for their very survival.”
It’s the second deployment in a row for the Lincoln in which the carrier hasn’t returned on schedule. The carrier left port in July 2002 for the war in Afghanistan and was on its way home when it was ordered to turn around and assist in the war in Iraq.
The Lincoln remained at sea for 290 days, the longest carrier deployment since 1973.
Navy families accepted the news of an extended deployment with good grace.
Stephanie Harriman said she mentally prepared for a six-month deployment when her husband, Petty Officer 1st Class Uriah Harriman, left with the Lincoln in October.
“The worst part about it was, it was getting so close,” she said.
It’s the first deployment for the young couple. They were married in August, bought a house in Granite Falls in September and put off their honeymoon because of the deployment.
“Of course I’m disappointed, but that’s what I married into,” Harriman said.
“You tell yourself that it won’t be that hard,” she added. “But then when the time actually comes …”
Her husband’s 28th birthday was Jan. 1, just days after the Lincoln was ordered to the Indian Ocean.
The Lincoln has been the sea-based center of relief efforts for Indonesia, and helicopters from the ship have been taking food, water, supplies and medical teams to villages flattened by the Dec. 26 magnitude-9 earthquake and the tsunamis that followed.
News of the Lincoln’s extension followed reports that the Indonesian government wants foreign troops helping with tsunami relief out of the country by the end of March.
“I’m frustrated that they don’t want us there,” Harriman said. “It’s like send him home now, I’ll take my husband back.
“I almost feel guilty wanting him to come home … because so many people need the help,” she added.
Bernard, the Navy spokesman in Indonesia, praised the Lincoln families for their role in the relief effort.
“Families should be proud of the work their sailors are doing, as well as their own sacrifice in supporting them while they are deployed,” Bernard said.
Reporter Brian Kelly: 425-339-3422 or kelly@heraldnet.com.
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