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From caves to the waves: Green Wave brings naval hospital home

NAPLES, Italy (USTCNS) --- Ambulances, stretchers, and boxes containing everything from bandages to medication… hardly an usual sight in any American hospital.

But, this hospital is…well…just a little different. It is stored in caves along the Norwegian fjords!

The ‘fleet’ hospital is a U.S. Naval mobile unit ready to deploy anywhere in the theater in a matter of days, capable of treating injured sailors and marines in the event of a crisis.

The U.S. Navy’s Fleet Hospital Program has stored everything required to support a 500-bed surgical hospital in the climate-controlled ‘Bjugn’ caves since the late 1980’s.

Last month, the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command container ship MV Green Wave loaded the fleet hospital and returned it to the U.S., as part of a standard equipment rotation formally called exercise “Trident Arch X.”

The Oct. 1-15 load took place at the port of Hommelvik in central Norway. The exercise also provides the Navy’s reserve cargo handling battalions with valuable ‘hands-on’ experience, by performing the loading of the ship. This year, a team of reservists from the South Carolina-based Navy Cargo Handling Battalion Four handled the cargo.

“Some fleet hospital assets remain in the caves, which were delivered last year,” said Mark Meeter of the Fleet Hospital Support Office, based in Williamsburg, Va.

Ambulances, fire and diesel trucks, ambulatory busses, trailers, shipping containers, even portable laundry units—more than a million pounds in all—made the 15 kilometer journey from the caves to Hommelvik, where it was loaded aboard Green Wave.

Military Sealift Command Northern Europe’s operations officer Paul Weitenberg, who acted as the liaison officer between the ship, cargo handlers, and port authorities, described the loading as ‘textbook,’ crediting not only the cargo handlers and the crew of Green Wave, but also the fine and unseasonably warm autumn weather.

The U.S. Navy, and indeed the U.S. Marines, which also stores some equipment in the caves, has used the caves since the tail end of the Cold War. Norway, with its close proximity to the then-Soviet Union, was the perfect location to store supplies and equipment, which need to be deployed quickly.

The German-built Green Wave was acquired by MSC in 1984, and is one of the command’s nine containers ships. The ship is 507 ft. long, has a beam of 69 ft. and weighs about 10,000 long tons. The Fleet Hospital Program is a part of the Naval Medical Logistics Command. The Naval Medical Logistics Command coordinates medical and dental material management and logistic support to operating forces worldwide.

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