January 6, 2005
A UMNS Report
By Kathy L. Gilbert

In a sea of despair, Navy Chaplain Lt. Gregory J. McCrimmon sees himself as a lifeline representing God's love.

The Rev. McCrimmon, a United Methodist, is one of four chaplains aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, operating in the ocean near Thailand and Indonesia. Helicopters make repeated trips to areas devastated by the Dec. 26 tsunami. Crews bring in supplies and take out the wounded most in need of medical treatment.

"There are a lot of bodies," he says. "I would say at least 30 to 40 percent of the dead have been washed to sea. The percentage may be higher than that; I think that is a very conservative estimate."

A dozen countries suffered devastating losses after the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean. Death counts are estimated at nearly 150,000. Many survivors are struggling to get clean water, food, shelter and medicine.

The stress to pilots and crew is tremendous, and McCrimmon is part of the team helping them deal with the pictures of destruction they are facing. He also helps "behind the scenes" to support the relief effort. "We have water ports set up on flight deck where we are filling jugs and jugs of water to make sure we push the fresh water back out to the villages," he says.

He says he has received e-mails from crew members talking about the bodies they are seeing. "There is a lot of stress just from the sheer number of the dead."

"When the pilots and crews come back in, we have a policy and a process of talking with them to ensure they are not traumatized and to get them to talk about what they have seen and how they feel," he says. "It helps them to process all they have gone through that day so they are able to get some good rest and then be able to get back in the game the next day."

McCrimmon says everything is saturated with water, and the geographic landscape has been dramatically changed. Helicopters from the Lincoln are providing food and fresh drinking water and evacuating people to medical facilities. However, there are areas in which even the helicopters can't land because of the level of saturation, he says.

Rice fields, houses and coastal businesses have been swept away. "We are not talking about two or three miles' distance; we are talking about thousands of miles where it affects 11 countries on two different continents. That is how devastating it is."

It will take many years for the people to re-establish their lives he says. "My impression is that a lot of cleaning up will not be able to take place until the water begins to dry out." More than 2 million people were left homeless and will remain homeless for a long time, he says.

Field photos of the devastation show sometimes the only structures left standing are mosques. "Around the different mosques they are digging mass graves to properly bury the people."

McCrimmon has been assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln since April 2004. "This is my first sea duty," he says. He is an ordained elder from the Kansas East Conference and previously served as a chaplain for a Veterans Affairs hospital as well as with reserve forces. He returned to active duty Jan. 7, 2002.

He has worked in other disaster relief efforts, including those following the tornadoes in Oklahoma City and Wichita, Kan. He also worked in the Balkans, where thousands died in ethnic fighting.

"I worked in Bosnia and Kosovo, but those were war-torn nations, man-made destruction. That doesn't even measure up to how nature itself has caused such destruction and has devastated so many people. I don't know of any war that has been fought over the history of mankind that has brought this kind of destruction."

In Bosnia and Kosovo, he says he saw the church at work through the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

"We are not only a connectional system in the United States, but we are a connectional system in the global sense. I believe our faith and our hearts reach out to all of the people of God."

He says he is happy to be part of the relief effort as a United Methodist minister. "I am happy to represent my denomination. I think this is where the Gospel has placed us."

McCrimmon emphasizes that he works as part of a team with the other chaplains on board the ship. "We are four chaplains from different denominations, and we all work together in a collective effort," he says. "It is not about denomination; it is about getting out and doing our part to help bring relief to those in a disaster area."

United Methodist News Service
Kathy L. Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.