WWII vessel evokes stirring visions of service

By Steve Garrison | Friday, September 05, 2008

We visited the LST 325 last weekend and stepped back in time for a few moments to walk where our father and grandfathers had walked, touching the steel and smelling the fuel and looking at the faces of 80-year-old men standing in line with baseball caps proclaiming their service branch. They had been a part of the war that produced her.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but for a moment there, as I stood deep inside the metal hold, I could almost feel the spirits of so many who had gone on before. I could almost feel the heat of the welding torch as a worker in a naval yard put together and gave birth to this ship.

Walking into the engine room I could almost hear the throb of the spinning propellers. I ran my hand along the canvas bunks piled four high and for a moment knew the homesickness, loneliness and sleepless nights every sailor and soldier knew. I knelt down on the upper deck and could almost see the wounded on stretchers squeezing the hand of a chaplain.

We left changed, walking back to the car in silence. The ship was the same size, but the men who served on her, and on thousands like her, seemed somehow bigger. We were overwhelmed with gratitude. We were thankful that these men had changed the world and, as Lincoln said, given us a “new birth of freedom.”

God bless those who served and those who serve today.

Steve Garrington

Davenport