Touring the World War II USS LST-325

On Friday we had the opportunity to tour the USS LST-325 at Ross's Landing in downtown Chattanooga. It is the last functioning Landing Ship Tank (LST) left in the world.

According to Nooga.com, LSTs are U.S. Navy ships that were designed for World War II in an effort to deliver battle-ready tanks, vehicles, soldiers and supplies directly onto enemy beaches. 

My dad told me that these types of ships were often used around Papua New Guinea to move bulldozers to different sites around the island.

Another interesting fact is that these ships can hold enough diesel fuel to travel around the world 1.5 times without refueling. Click here to read more facts about the ship.

To enter the ship, we walked in through the open door that would be used for loading tanks or trucks. We then made our way up through the decks of the ship. 

Seeing where the sailors would have slept, ate and worked.

There was even a jeep from the TV show M.A.S.H. on display.

As we made our way through the tour, we realized that one of the men walking behind us was actually a vet from WWII. We stopped and chatted with him for a bit, to learn some more history and to thank him for his service.

If you are interested in history, or just want to see a large ship, this is worth taking the tour.

The cost of the tour is $10 for adults and $5 (ages 6–17); children 5 and under are free. There is also a family rate of $20 for two adults and two children. 

The tour will be running from 9-5 daily through September 17.

2012 Book 21: Lost in Shangri-la

Lost in Shangri-la by Mitchell Zuckoff is an account of a rescue mission during World War II to save 3 survivors who were stranded in the mountains of New Guinea during a sight seeing trip. At the time, this area was unchartered territory full of war-oriented tribes who had lived untouched by the outside world. It was an area full of dangers like cannibals and enemy Japanese troops. The plane that crashed lost 21 people, one of the survivors, John McCollum, lost his twin brother.

This was an interesting story for me since I have a personal connection to New Guinea: my parents {and much of my extended family} were missionaries there in the 70s and 80s. I lived in the Mount Hagen {which is referenced in the book, but the area the plane crashed was more remote} until I was six. My family returned for a visit when I was 13 and then my husband and I visited again in 2004.

The book was intriguing. The only way to reach the survivors was to parachute in. The rescue team was a group of Filipino Americans who had little experience actually jumping. To get the survivors out, they had to wait until wounds healed and then they used a technique of landing a glider in the mountainous terrain and then the plane that "dropped" the glider off had to come back to "catch" the glider using a rope hung across a sling attached to the glider and a hook attached to the plane in order to pull it out. The alternative would have been to actually march out through a completely unknown area.

Definitely an interesting story. Especially considering that two of the survivors had extensive injuries.

I think I probably read too many true accounts of adventure or maybe it is because I have traveled to and stayed in remote villages in PNG, but I didn't feel like the telling of the story was as interesting as it could have been. Over the years I have heard some pretty crazy stories from various family member's wild experiences in PNG. I even have a couple of my own stories. Odds are if you have visited this country you have a good story to tell... 

This book felt like it was mostly fact telling, which is a shame because in New Guinea, to tell your story is a very important part of the culture and I don't know that this book did justice to the story.

Excerpts from the book:

The island was a gift-box assortment of inhospitable environments... The New Guinea terrain was so forbidding that the most common experience for its inhabitants was isolation. Pockets of humanity carved out small places to survive, fighting with anyone who came near and often among themselves...

"Probably after the war the Dutch government will send an expedition into the valley or missionaries may penetrate it, so until then the natives... will know nothing of the white man except that he flies a big bird that makes lots of noise. Who knows, maybe they are much better off the way they are. At any rate, I am sure if they knew of the turmoil in which we are now engaged (WWII), they would be happier to stay ignorant of the 'civilized' world."  – letter home from William J. Gatling Jr.

New Guinea's jungles were boundless cemeteries of unmarked military graves...The weather and terrain account more more [downed] airplanes than combat flying.

Margaret, McCollum, and Decker had crashed-landed in a world that time didn't forget. Time never knew it existed.

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Book 26

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt is a terribly sad memoir of Frank’s childhood in Ireland during the depression and early years of WWII. The only redeeming part of this story is that Frank lived to tell of his ordeal. He endured extreme poverty, an alcoholic father and a controlling religious system, yet he still managed to grow up and make something of himself.

Quotes of interest from the book:

I know that big people don’t like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How’s school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.

I sit on the seventh step a long time and I’m sure the angel is there. I tell him things you can’t tell your mother or father for fear of being hit on the head or told to go out and play.

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.

…’Tis class distinction. They don’t want boys from the lanes on the altar… Oh no, they want the nice boys with hair oil and new shoes that have fathers with suits and ties and steady jobs. That’s what it is and ‘tis hard to hold on to the Faith with the snobbery that’s in it.

You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else, but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind. It is your treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.

The best people for tips are windows, Protestant ministers’ wives and the poor in general.

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Book 25

The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies takes place in Wales during the end of WWII. In the course of this story, several different stories take place. There is the Welsh girl who is coming to terms with carrying a baby after an English soldier rapes her. There is the German soldier in the POW camp in Wales who is coming to terms about what the war is really about. There is a connection between the girl and the soldier. And there are other perimeter stories that are happening as well.

I found the story lines intriguing but was disappointed by the ending. There were too many pieces left undone.

Quotes of interest from the book:

…What was it to be forced to do something she didn’t want to do? She’d been forced all her life by one circumstance or another – by poverty, by her mother’s death, by the needs of the flock. Being forced to do things is such a part of her daily life…

She tries to decide how she feels about the Germans now. It seems important. She ought to hate them, she thinks, and she supposes she does, but she can’t quite muster the heat of anger. She doesn’t know them, after all; whatever they’ve done, it doesn’t feel like they’ve done it to her.

…Of course he’d been thinking of German planes. But what he really wants to say is that he’d been thinking of freedom. The freedom he’d heard in the planes overhead, the freedom he felt thinking of the toy planes, something from the camp, something he’d made there, existing outside of it, outside of his reach, his sight.

…Now it’s as if he’s rechristened in death, as if Arthur and the rest have created a Rhys they can mourn.

Are we who we think we are, or are we who others judge us to be?