Truman returns to Norfolk

[thedrifter]

May 23, 2003

Truman returns to Norfolk

By Sonja Barisic
Associated Press


Rain-soaked sailors triumphantly unfurled a banner reading ?We gave ?em freedom!? as the Harry S. Truman, the first East Coast aircraft carrier to return from the Iraq war, arrived at its home port Friday.
The Truman, which had been at sea more than five months with 5,400 Marines and sailors on board, docked at the Norfolk Naval Station to the cheers of thousands of friends and relatives on the pier.

?It?s wonderful. It?s excellent,? said Petty Officer 3rd Class Jovantay Champagne, 25, of Providence, R.I. ?It just makes you feel like you did something important. It?s nice to get a little bit of appreciation for this.?

?It?s great to be home,? said Petty Officer Josiah Loeffler as he cradled his 4-week-old daughter, Courtney, on the pier.

Eight smaller ships in the Truman strike group also were arriving Friday. A total of about 8,000 sailors and Marines were aboard the nine ships. A second Norfolk-based carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt, is due home next week.

Not all the returning sailors will be able to go home immediately after the 1,096-foot Truman docks. Airman Maxwell Wollman was among those on duty who won?t be allowed to leave the base until Saturday.

?Truthfully, I?m not excited at all,? said Wollman, a 24-year-old aviation ordnanceman from Ft. Wayne, Ind., who was on his first deployment. ?I get to watch everybody else get off. I?m more excited about Saturday.?

Still, he said he was ?happy to smell American air,? adding, ?It lets you know you?re going home.?

When the carrier left on Dec. 5 for a scheduled six-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf, sailors knew they might have to go to war and live up to the ship?s slogan: ?Give ?em hell.?

?We trained to that tempo,? said Capt. Michael R. Groothousen, the Truman?s commanding officer. ?It?s the same training we would always do, but there was probably a little more spring in our step because of the possibility we could see combat.?

There also was ?the honest fear that you may not return home with everyone you leave with,? Groothousen acknowledged. ?That plays on you a little bit emotionally when you set sail.?

No crew members were lost, and any worries about safety couldn?t undermine sailors? belief in the mission, Groothousen said.

The call came early March 20 ? the second day of the war ? when ships in the Truman strike group launched Tomahawk missiles onto targets in northern Iraq.

Over the next 30 days, aircraft taking off from the Truman dropped more than 700 tons of bombs on targets in northern Iraq to support U.S. infantry and special operations forces on the ground. That was more than any other battle group in the war, officials said.

Other ships returning to Norfolk on Friday were the guided missile cruiser San Jacinto; the guided missile destroyers Oscar Austin, Mitscher and Donald Cook; the destroyers Briscoe and Deyo; the guided missile frigate Hawes; and the oiler John Lenthall.

Squadrons from Carrier Air Wing Three flew to their home bases in Virginia and other states Wednesday and Thursday.






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Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.


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