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Navy Hospital Ship Comfort to Return From Iraqi Freedom

Navy Newsstand

Story Number: NNS030610-42

Release Date: 6/10/2003 3:17:00 PM

From Military Sealift Command Public Affairs

ABOARD USNS COMFORT, At Sea (NNS) -- Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) will return home to Baltimore from the Arabian Gulf June 12, ending a rapidly-begun, five-month mission in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

Canton Pier will be the site where families and loved ones will welcome about 320 military medical and support personnel, predominantly from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and about 60 civil service mariners from the Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC), headquartered in Washington, D.C.

The 894-foot ship, with its 1,000-bed medical treatment facility and 12 operating rooms, is one of two Navy hospital ships ordinarily kept pierside in reduced operating status, ready to support combat or humanitarian operations.

Comfort and her West Coast sister ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) are mobilization resources for U.S. military forces, able to be activated, crewed by about 60 civilian mariners, staffed by up to about 1,200 military medical personnel and underway in a matter of a few days when duty calls. Comfort was activated Dec. 26 and departed Baltimore Jan. 6.

Comfort had 300 military medical and support personnel embarked when its OIF voyage began. In March, the military contingent expanded to approximately 1,100 personnel, including about 1,000 medical specialists, while the ship was on station in the Arabian Gulf.

During OIF, Comfort's medical treatment facility treated more than 650 patients, including about 200 Iraqi prisoners of war and Iraqi civilians. More than 600 surgeries were performed, and nearly 600 units of blood were transfused, making Comfort's blood bank the busiest in the U.S. Central Command theater of operations.

By early May, more than half of the military medical and support staff had departed Comfort and were delivered to Bahrain. From there, they flew to the United States on commercial flights to resume their assignments ashore, which had been temporarily filled by military Reservists recalled to active duty.

As part of Comfort's homecoming to Baltimore, MSC Commander Vice Adm. David L. Brewer III will present Merchant Marine Expeditionary Medals to each of the ship's mariners. The medal is awarded to U.S. merchant seamen who serve on U.S.-flagged ships in support of operations involving U.S. and allied military forces.

Comfort has participated in many events around the world since she was delivered to the Navy in 1987. In addition to assisting in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, she helped with Haitian migrant operations in the Caribbean in 1994. She has also participated in various multinational military and humanitarian exercises.