US Navy's 'small family' draw together to offer comfort

NORFOLK - Making her first deployment as a cook on the USS Cole, 19-year-old United States Navy Seaman Lakeina Francis excitedly called home from Italy a week ago.

She asked for some warmer clothes and a batch of her mother's oatmeal cookies.

Francis, fresh out of basic training and Navy cooking school, was following in the footsteps of her father, a retired Navy chief, and living out a dream of seeing the world during her tour of duty.

"She just loved looking forward to learning so many new things and visiting new places," said Marcia Hamilton, a family friend.

"She had been in the Navy just long enough to go to boot camp and school, and she loved it."

Just days after her call home, Francis was one of 17 US sailors killed or missing and presumed dead after an explosion in Aden harbour in Yemen blew a large hole in the side of the destroyer.

In the wake of the explosion, Navy families at the USS Cole's home port in Norfolk, Virginia, have joined ranks to support the relatives of the dead and missing sailors, and have begun making plans to commemorate their collective loss.

"The Navy is one big, small family, so when this happens to one ship or one family, it happens to all of us," said Captain Joe Navratil, a spokesman for the US Atlantic Fleet based in Norfolk.

In Williamsport, Maryland, the family of shipmate Seaman Apprentice Craig Wibberley sat in stunned silence watching television coverage of caskets containing the bodies of sailors killed in the suicide bombing being carried off a plane at the Ramstein US air base in Germany.

Wibberley, aged 19, the son of a former US Marine, was planning to study radio electronics in the Navy.

In Norfolk, the fallen sailors were remembered during a ceremony to dedicate a new statue on the base. The statue depicts a traditional Navy homecoming, with a sailor hugging his wife.

The ceremony was planned earlier as part of Fleet Week activities to mark the US Navy's 225th anniversary.

- REUTERS

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