USNS Comfort Visit
by Matthew G. Moffit, RADM CG500

U.S. Navy Hospital Ship USNS Comfort

To my family,

After reading the letter written by Mrs. Katie Bell, I felt a professional and morale obligation to personally visit with our Marines and Soldiers on the USNS Comfort and to get a sense for a part of my profession I have not had contact with before. As some of you know, in Naval Aviation, accidents normally have one of two outcomes, death or minor injury. I have never confronted that which lies between. And after having experienced the "in between" today, I join Mrs. Bell in knowing that America produces some wonderful human beings...in spite of what you might hear from the media.

The USNS Comfort is a 900' Military Sealift Command vessel manned with 1200 active duty Navy personnel, mostly Medical Corps and 60 civilian mariners. It has a "Master," which is the civilian equivalent of a US Navy Commanding Officer. Military Sealift Command is the civilian maritime component of the DoD. They actually have quite a few ships including most of our logistics force, i.e., tankers, oilers, ammo, so on and so forth. They move most of the "heavy" equipment for the Army and Marines.

Ok, I arrived via helo for my two hour indoc visit. The Comfort is not your normal Navy ship...it is a converted merchant vessel. It is missing the characteristic water tight hatches, narrow passageways, steep narrow ladders, overhead cabling, visible plumbing, etc., that you find on a war fighting ship. It actually looks like the inside of any military hospital except the floors/decks are painted metal plate, mostly vice marble or linoleum. Very roomy and not very nautical. While it didn't have the interior decor of a Princess Cruise ship, it did have the openness.

Today was a slow day for the crew of the Comfort. Their triage/receiving area was empty except for staff. Several days ago they had received over 40 personnel with a variety of wounds. I was pleased to see they were not knee deep in casualties at this point. The triage area is big. This ship can handle upwards of 1000 casualties and this is the biggest "emergency" room I've ever seen. The hospitals you visit don't come close to what this place could handle if the situation required it. There is a great group of patriots working here. They are confronted with the battlefield's worst and make the initial decision on what action to take. By the way, these casualties come from all sources: battlefield, field hospital, way station, you name it, but always by helo.

From Triage casualties are segregated by injury and sent to different locations, surgery, x-ray, etc., depending upon need. We moved to surgery and the operating rooms. There are twelve of them and they are also big, the biggest I've ever seen. These have all the necessary life saving equipment/machines the best trauma centers in the states have. And they have tie down pads...that's so when the ship is rolling the gurney doesn't drift around the room. They even have "attach" points for the surgeon's chair, so patient and surgeon remain as one with sea induced rolls.

From here we move to the ICU. This is big too. About 40 beds and many are occupied with the recent arrivals and post ops. Here I see Iraqis primarily. By the way, there are over 200 Iraqis on board...I can't tell the difference between the males, whether they are EPWs or civilians caught in the cross fire. I did see several women and was told they were civilians. Many tubes hanging from stands and tubes going in and out of those on the gurneys. Not much movement, these people are hurt and hurt bad.

Next we move to what I would call a lower level ICU. Patients still in jeopardy, but stable enough to be removed from the primary ICU. This is where I came face to face with several of our great Soldiers and Marines. This is a slow day in this room thankfully, there are only 3 Americans here. Two of the soldiers were not conscious, one having sustained a head injury and the other significant shrapnel and bullet wounds. The latter was referred to as the "miracle" patient. The expectation was death a couple of days ago, but this brave soul was starting to respond to treatment. The swelling had gone down enough to enable the surgeons to close his wound and he had had another surgery today to take care of several holes in his intestines. He was young, probably in his early twenties. The soldier with the head injury was the pilot of a helo that had had a hard landing. I would say so, it dropped from about 100 feet... He has been in a coma ever since, but they were pleased to see he was moving his legs and upper torso although still not conscious. Finally, I learned about a young Marine. He was conscious and I heard about his chest wound being closed recently after having the swelling go down enough to allow the surgeons to close it. He was in his early 20's, a bit older than my oldest, but then that might have been high since he had probably aged a bit as a result of his recent combat experience. He was from Texas and proud of it. I was choked up and could hardly get anything coherent out as I looked at him lying in his bed with all his bandages and tubing coming from and going into him. He said he was doing ok and that the staff was treating him well. I thanked him for all he had done and for "taking one" for the Marine Corps. I said I represented his aviation support from the Kitty Hawk and we had obviously not done our job in his case. He said that wasn't the case and it was ok. That did it for me, I couldn't speak anymore... He raised his hand to shake mine and we did so. I couldn't have been more proud of him and all those he represented lying there in that bed.

We moved onto to another similar ward, but this one was filled with Iraqis. The makeup of this ward included male and female. Actually there were two married couples here, each having sustained injuries at the same time. I heard one cryptic story of the Fidayeen grabbing one couple and using them as shields in a car. There were seven severe burn cases here too. And that's more burn victims than in our big burn centers in the states... This was a tough place for me to be.

Next we moved back up stairs to where more Iraqi civilians were recovering with less severe injuries. They were a mix of male and female ranging in age from 3 years to 60s. The 3 year old was there as a result of a women passing this child to a Marine in an evac helo. The Marine accepted the child who had been burnt pretty badly in the lower torso and not knowing anything about the child. The little girl was taken care of as were all the casualties that came to Comfort. Unfortunately, she was a Jane Doe. No one knew a thing about her. So the staff took pictures and had passed them out to everyone that would take them ashore in an attempt to find her parents. Amazingly enough a 12 year old girl arrived two weeks later with an injury and identified the 3 year old as her little cousin. The 3 year old's parents had been killed and her aunt was the one that gave her to the Marines realizing she would die if left in Iraq. Both girls are recovering nicely. There was also a little, but very active 6/7 year old girl in the ward. She had no injuries, but her story is also amazing. It seems she was lying in a "field" in Kuwait when the operation began. The Soldiers picked her up and sent her to the Comfort. She "came to" en route and started acting like any 6/7 year old. She was examined and found to be fit. Unfortunately, no one knows who she is or where she came from other than that spot in the desert. She has become the ward's entertainment/mascot so to speak. She is full of life, having "high fived" all of us during our visit. She is pretty cute and several of the Navy personnel are talking adoption if they can't find her family or home.

Back upstairs for a tour of the EPW ward. These guys are mostly Iraqi Army, the most basic and ill equipped of Saddam's ex army. They range from late teens/early twenties to 60 plus. A variety of injuries and wounds, but all recovering. Interestingly there are only 4 interpreters onboard. One story I was told was about one of these guys waking up after surgery and asking if he was in heaven...The staff chuckled. And I was thinking the answer should have been "Well, yes and no"! Another EPW was headed into surgery and he thought he was going to be killed, having never seen a operating room full of masked people speaking English while trying to keep him alive...how ironic... This was a pretty sedate crowd today, but there were more than enough Force Protection personnel present to keep them under control if the need arose.

With that the tour came to an end. We had seen the best the US has to offer, our dedicated Marines and Soldiers and the Navy's finest medical capability afloat. It was truly an amazing and heart wrenching afternoon. I am so glad I was able to visit with our troops, we in Naval Aviation never get a chance to see this aspect of our profession and it gave me a much better appreciation for the sacrifices made by others. We are indeed a blessed country that we would have such fine young people willing to put themselves in harm's way knowing full well they could end up on USNS Comfort or worse... It also indicated to me that we in Naval Aviation need to keep our nation's Soldiers and Marines in our foremost thoughts when we are supporting them. They need us to be at our best to ensure they can do their best.

And finally, may God bless all those serving on the USNS Comfort. They are performing a mission far more difficult than anything I have had to do in my 29 years of service.

Love Matt