Ann Wright says the frustration expressed by military families at a recent Veterans for Peace conference echoed those of families with relatives on U.S. military bases in the Middle East.
U.S. aircraft on the flight deck of USS Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 28 in support of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. (U.S. Department of Defense /Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
By Ann Wright
Rotten food, overflowing toilets into bunking areas, no room in the incoming missile shelters, confiscated cellphones that are the notification devices for incoming missiles, infrequent mail, social media closed down: these were some of the issues that military families identified at the national conference of Veterans For Peace.
Spouses and parents of Air Force, Army, Marine and Navy told of plummeting morale, lack of basic supplies and attacks on U.S. military bases that are not reported in the U.S. media.
These frustrations echoed those of military families who met with senior military officials to describe conditions on U.S. military bases in the Middle East that are coming under attack from Iran in response to the brutal U.S.-Israeli five-month offensive.
On Aug. 6, the Navy’s senior leadership held listening sessions with the families of aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln’s sailors — one in-person session in San Diego, and a second online session later the same evening, according to The Maritime Executive. Family members leaked recordings of those sessions to MS NOW that described conditions aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln: showers plagued with stubborn mildew, flagging morale, heavy fatigue, shortages of supplies and food, contaminated water supplies and lost mail.
Since departing from departing Naval Base San Diego on Nov. 21, 2025, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its crew of 5,000 sailors and Marines has been deployed more than 250 days, with only a stop in Guam in December and a brief visit in Oman in June after 208 days at sea.
A second aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford had similar problems when it sailed from the Caribbean to the Middle East after being off Venezuela in the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in January.
During that deployment, the ship’s toilets kept failing, with sewage often overflowing and spilling onto the floor. Additionally, a fire broke out in the laundry room, causing enough damage that the Ford went into a port on the Greek island of Crete for repairs.
More than 200 sailors on the Ford were treated for smoke inhalation, according to USNI News, “with one sailor medically evacuated from the carrier after being injured in the damage control effort. Two others were treated for lacerations. The smoke damage from the laundry-room fire extended to the berthing.” More than 100 bunks and personal gear were destroyed in the fire.
Articles in Stars and Stripes and the Navy Times detail at least six attempts by crew members to jump overboard from the USS Abraham Lincoln, with interviews conducted with sailors and families of those on board who described the impacts of the lengthy deployment.
Army & Marine Ground Forces Under Missile Attacks
Satellite imagery of black smoke rising from the Port of Salalah on March 13 during Iranian strikes on Oman. (CC BY 4.0 /Wikimedia Commons)
Families of U.S. ground forces on the U.S. military bases scattered all over the Middle East describe extreme overcrowding in shelters for incoming missile attacks.
According to the news outlet War Horse, the only public source for injuries during the U.S. attack on Iran is the Defense Casualty Analysis System, which provides monthly totals for the war on Iran with limited demographic data.
More than 400 casualties (non lethal) were recorded from Feb. 28 and April 8 due to the U.S. attack on Iran, War Horse reports, adding:
“More than 270 of the roughly non-lethal 400 casualties were Army soldiers, and about one-third of those were reservists. Enlisted soldiers accounted for most Army casualties, including 57 sergeants and 53 specialists. But also wounded were 64 Army officers, including 20 captains and 13 lieutenant colonels or colonels….
The Navy reported 64 casualties, none of whom were classified as seriously injured. The Air Force recorded 51 casualties, and the Marine Corps recorded 19. Unlike the Army, the other branches did not list the type or cause of injury.”
U.S. troops suffered shrapnel wounds, broken bones, smoke inhalation and other injuries. But one category appeared far more often than any other: head trauma.
At least 170 troops sustained head trauma between the start of the war to early April, according to the data.”
Some military health experts, according to War Horse, worry that the large portion of the wounded suffering from traumatic brain injuries —caused by damage to the brain that can impact thinking, movement and emotion — could become the signature injury of this war, as in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon has attempted to reduce the accounting on the number of U.S. military killed and wounded in the war on Iran by separating those killed/wounded before the May 1 ceasefire and after.
In a total accounting, from before and after the ceasefire, 18 U.S, troops have been killed and 624 wounded since the U.S. began its war against Iran on Feb. 28..
US Senate Finally Getting Involved
The bodies of six U.S. soldiers killed in the Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, drone attack being transferred to the U.S. on March 7. (The White House /Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
The U.S. Congress is finally getting involved. On Aug. 12, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao to express “serious concern” about the increasing length of deployments and demand answers about living conditions aboard the carrier.
“There have been widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns,” aboard the ship, he said in the letter, as well as “disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages in route to the ship to be lost in transit for months.”
Blumenthal’s letter ends with six questions for Hegseth and Department of Defense to answer concerning conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln and a call to treat servicewomen and men properly:
“The men and women aboard the Lincoln have answered the call to serve their country. The Department owes them not only adequate supplies, maintenance, and support during this deployment, but a sustainable force-generation model that does not rely on repeatedly extending sailors and ships to meet persistent operational demands.
Our servicemembers deserve nothing less than the full support of their government — and the American people deserve a military strategy that is worthy of the sacrifices we ask them to make.”
Ann Wright served in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves for 29 years and retired as a colonel. She was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience. She has been with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition since 2010, has been put in Israeli prison twice for attempting to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade on Gaza and has been on segments of flotillas in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2024.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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