First off the ship were the new dads.

When the USS Abraham Lincoln pulled into port in San Diego on Thursday, dozens of sailors and Marines whose babies were born during the carrier’s grueling 322 days away from home sprinted to meet the children they had never held.

They had shoved off from this same dock in November, thinking they would be home by May, then June, then the end of the year — as President Donald Trump repeatedly extended their deployment and ordered the aircraft carrier to strike Iran and enforce a naval blockade.

After military families told MS NOW about the poor conditions and mental health struggles service members were experiencing during the long deployment, they confronted Navy leaders in a fiery town hall in August. Navy leaders then changed plans and turned the Lincoln home months earlier.

Iran’s bombing in March of a key U.S. base in Bahrain disrupted the Navy’s ability to resupply the Lincoln, leading to demoralizing shortages of food and limits on basic supplies like soap and toothpaste. The Navy has acknowledged there were eight suicide attempts in the carrier group during their deployment.

Those hardships made Thursday’s celebrations at Naval Air Station North Island all the more heartfelt. Children who had waited with their families since before sunrise held homemade signs, waved American flags, rang bells and cheered as their mothers and fathers finally came home.

Kathy Monterroso traveled across the country from Virginia so her 6-month-old daughter could see dad in person for the first time. “It’s been a rough, rough 10 months for sure — especially pregnant, having a baby,” she said, as the ship came into port. “We’re just excited for him to finally meet his daughter.”

The saga of the Lincoln has become a tangible illustration of what many military planners had warned: A war with Iran would draw the United States into a prolonged conflict, with severe reverberations across the entire U.S. military.

The decision to go to war did not just affect the price at the pump or the stockpiles of U.S. weapons. It exacted a deeply personal toll on the people sent to fight it. The people wearing the uniforms — and the families of these service members — spent months apart, endured brutal conditions and made sacrifices that will have lasting consequences.

The day before the Lincoln arrived, the sailors and Marines were visited on the ship by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth acknowledged that he was the one who signed orders twice to keep the carrier longer at sea.

The crew, he said, was “two times extended when you thought you were going home, and we asked you to do more. And you know what you did? You did more. And it wasn’t easy, and there wasn’t easy resupply, and there were contested seas, and you were in the west, shooting down incoming — it was a dangerous place to be.”

He said the media “tried to turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of a symbol — a symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale, or a symbol of a failed mission.” But, Hegseth said, “I know it’s the exact opposite.”

Hegseth went on to tell the crew that the ship had received a presidential unit citation for its months in combat against Iran. 

During the deployment, Hegseth said, the carrier flew 3,693 combat sorties, dropped 1.37 million pounds of bombs, launched 450 Tomahawk cruise missiles, shot down 77 attack drones, destroyed 21 anti-ship cruise missiles, and “defended against four fast attack craft and explosive-carrying dhows.”

An unexpected war

When the Lincoln left San Diego on Nov. 21, the aircraft carrier had been scheduled to do a regular rotation in the Indo-Pacific.

But that plan suddenly changed in January when, according to online trackers of ship movements, the Lincoln was redirected to the Middle East.

The warship was one of two aircraft carriers that were in the region when Trump ordered the first airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

At the time, Trump said the military campaign would take a few weeks. But five months later, the Lincoln was still there, imposing the naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, protecting shipping by intercepting drones and launching strikes on strategic targets inside of Iran.

By July, the Lincoln had beat a modern-day record for most continuous days at sea without a port call.

Typically, aircraft carriers stop every four to six weeks, but the 5,000 sailors and Marines serving on the Lincoln had not gotten off the ship in 208 days.

Families told MS NOW in early August that there were food shortages on the ship, a lack of basic hygienic supplies, the mail was not coming in consistently, the shifts were long and without breaks, and they were extremely worried about their loved ones’ physical and mental health.

“There was a time where he was only eating half a cup of rice and two tortillas — like there hasn’t been a whole lot. He did tell me about not being able to shower,” Nicole Conrad, whose son was serving on the ship, told MS NOW at the time.

With the return date already pushed out twice and no clear end in sight, the morale, according to the military families, was extremely low.

In early August, approximately 400 loved ones of service members on the ship confronted Navy leaders, including Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, in two back-to-back town halls, one in person at the Island Club on the naval base in San Diego and one held virtually.

Families demanded answers about the conditions and the timeline of the ship’s return.

Navy leaders said they did not know when the ship was coming back, but did say that Iran had destroyed much of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet logistical hub in Bahrain, which disrupted efforts to resupply the aircraft carrier.

It was a stunning admission that the administration had not previously acknowledged, and it showed the damage Iran had inflicted during the war and the effect it was having on U.S. troops.

‘The boat is finally getting to me’

On Aug. 3, eight and a half months into the deployment, a 19-year-old junior enlisted sailor jumped off the Lincoln in what his wife described to MS NOW as a suicide attempt. The wife spoke to MS NOW on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive mental health issues.

She shared his final text to her before he jumped off the ship. 

“I think the boat is finally getting to me,” the sailor wrote. “I don’t think I can do another deployment after this and I don’t even know if I can finish this deployment.”

The wife, who had a baby girl in February while her husband was at sea, said she had been worried about him since halfway through the deployment when he started texting her saying that he was depressed and exhausted from working long shifts with no breaks as an aircraft mechanic on the carrier’s flight deck.

Later, that sailor would be medically evacuated from the ship back to San Diego, only to discover that he was facing disciplinary charges for jumping off the ship.  

At the time, the Navy said there had not been an increase in suicidal ideations on the Lincoln.

Weeks later, in a letter to Congress, Cao said eight service members from the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group — which included the carrier, the squadrons embarked on it and the accompanying destroyers — had attempted to take their lives. Another service member had attempted to jump from the Lincoln in March and had been medically evacuated, Cao wrote.

‘Not nearly long enough’

As the story intensified and drew international attention, Hegseth was asked on Aug. 13 during a trip to Panama what his response was to the military families’ descriptions of conditions on the Lincoln.

“It’s completely misrepresented,” Hegseth said. “Listen, we made sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything that we can provide them at every single moment.”

The next day, a reporter asked Trump if he was concerned about the mental health of service members on the Lincoln and if the deployment had gone on too long. “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough,” Trump said.

Americans from coast to coast began to rally around the Lincoln to show the crew their support. Signs were spotted on highways from Kansas to California and Pennsylvania to Iowa. Veterans began donation drives to put together and send morale and care packages for the crew.  

Lawmakers such as Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., began to ask questions about the conditions and the strain the deployment was having on the crew.

Coming home

Then, on Aug. 15, Adm. Brad Cooper, U.S. Central Command’s top commander who was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Iran war, boarded the Lincoln and announced that they would be going home.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal the next day, Cooper wrote, “History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era.”

Navy leaders said the USS George Washington, which is typically based in Yokosuka, Japan, and used as a deterrent to countries such as North Korea, China and Russia in the Indo-Pacific, would relieve the Lincoln in the Middle East.

The deployment of the Washington indicated a sudden shift in plans, as Navy leaders had told military families in the San Diego town hall that the USS Theodore Roosevelt would be the replacement — which was still weeks away from pushing off.

It also raised serious questions about whether U.S. enemies in that part of the world could strategically capitalize on the change in ship movements because the Navy was running out of deployable ships to use in the Iran war.

As he walked off the ship in San Diego, sailor Elias Garcia said his deployment on the Lincoln “was difficult — like the shortages, the food shortage and all that.” But, he said, his faith kept him going and “pushing through,” as well as his shipmates — and so did knowing his mom was waiting for him back home.

His mom, he said, was one of the family members speaking out about the conditions on the ship. He said he believes that his mom and other military families confronting Navy leadership helped get the Lincoln home faster. “Moms are miraculous, right?”

Now, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and its carrier strike group are en route to the Middle East.

Navy leaders said in a video on social media that they have learned lessons from the Lincoln’s deployment that they are applying to the Roosevelt’s deployment, including stocking more food and supplies in the cavities of the ship. 

The 5,000 sailors and Marines on that ship will soon find out if that is true.

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