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along the shore. Bands played military marches and school buses full of children unloaded at the docks. They all came to witness this incredible thing, these men who had a dream and fought for years to make it come true. America's most honorable generation wasn't gone yet and had a few lessons to teach everyone - the meaning of imagination, courage and integrity.

In the tugboat's cabin, Capt. Steve Minhinnette prepared to touch the nose of the tugboat to the peeling gray side of the LST-325. He'd never do what these guys did, he admits. He avoids the open seas. It gets too rough out there.

Broadus and Moore scrambled to hook up to the side of the LST. The LST crew hustled, moving a hanging ladder out of the way, catching and tightening ropes. One shouted for a cold beer. "It does your heart good," Broadus said. "I'm telling you, this is once-in-a-lifetime here." LSTs saw action in bloodiest conflicts.

It took 17 years to happen.   

Lee Hunter, of Vincennes, Ind., came to greet the LST-325. He was one of the original three who started planning the trip in 1984. He was part of an LST association that wanted to use a ship as a national memorial. But because the price of towing was $600,000, they decided to sail it themselves. The only problem was finding one. When finally they did, he flew to Greece to help prepare the ship, but returned home before the crew left Crete. He said if he'd realized how time-consuming the project would prove, he probably would not have taken part. "It was just one of those things. I got hooked on it."

Inspectors for U.S. Customs, the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture boarded the LST-325 as is customary when a ship comes into port from a foreign country. "It was acceptable," said Lt. Ladonn Hight of the Coast's Guard's Marine Safety office here, in an interview at the Convention Center, but she noted, "It wasn't in the best shape." She said they did a "light inspection," and added, "It would have had to be something really big wrong with the ship for the Coast Guard not to allow it to come on into Mobile with thousands of people anxiously waiting for it." Hight said the Coast Guard closed the Mobile Ship Channel to deep draft vessels beginning Tuesday night so large ships "wouldn't overtake" the LST-325.

When they weren't repairing engines or dodging bad weather, Lauren Whiting and his crewmates found a few minutes to sit in the sun and shoot the breeze. "We used to joke," Whiting said Monday, "when else can you go on a four-month cruise for $2,000?" After returning home from a cross-Atlantic journey, Whiting, 76, was back in suit and tie behind his desk at Whiting Roll Up Door. He was 40 pounds lighter, and had the tale of a lifetime to tell. Whiting was among 29 veterans - average age 72 - who brought the landing ship tank 4,350 miles from Greece to Mobile, Ala., where it is to become a floating museum and national monument.  The ship left Greece on Nov. 17 and arrived in Mobile on Jan. 10.
The crew includes veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Each paid his own way to Greece and about $2,000 to cover food and other expenses of the crossing. The association received $70,000 in private donations for repairs, plus 50,000

gallons of diesel fuel donated by the British Petroleum Co. Another firm, Phillips Oil Co., has pledged up to $40,000 to cover additional fuel costs if needed.

The Coast Guard had warned the trip was too dangerous to make. "This wasn't a lark," Whiting said, his desk festooned with welcome-back cards, balloons and a box of chocolates.

Joe Huff, 74, and Cal Ellison, 75, both of Mobile, were among roughly four dozen members of the Mobile-based LST Veterans Task Force who showed up Wednesday to take over for the tired men of the 325. The Mobile men plan to stand watch aboard the ship, eight hours per shift, round-the-clock until the 325 is towed north to Chickasaw for repairs. "These 29 guys are doing the job of 109," said Huff, noting the manpower originally intended for the LST.

The years have not been kind to the LST. "The ship was a derelict. Nothing worked," Whiting said. There was hot water for showers, but nothing else, and for a while cockroaches outnumbered crew members. "We thought our main problem was to get this ship back from the Greeks, but lately we have been fighting with another group as to who will control this vessel: the deck house can be rightly called Cockroach Hotel," says the captain's log. But Whiting stressed that the ship was structurally sound. During the voyage, Whiting was responsible for keeping the old vessel's engines running. "The most difficult part of it was the tension of trying to get her back to Mobile on time because there were lots of things planned for our reception," Whiting said. "And of course, everybody was anxious to get home and you're relying on these two old engines."

The Coast Guard had advised against an ocean crossing during the stormy winter months, citing the ship's lack of safety equipment and shaky steering.

But Whiting and the other veterans would hear none of it.

Vice Adm. John E. Shkor, commander of the Portsmouth-based Atlantic Area Command, said in a letter to the ship's captain that while existing laws and regulations did not give him the authority to prevent them from getting under way, he urged them to reconsider.

The World War II-vintage LST-325 battled 8 to 12 -foot seas in the Atlantic Ocean on its plodding journey from Gibraltar to Mobile. "When I was overseas, we went through cyclones and hurricanes," said Whiting, a former chief petty officer who saw action in seven invasions of Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. This time around, he said, "we didn't have anyone fall or get hurt or anything. These guys were sailors."
Long, slow targets they may be, but the tank-landing ships known as LSTs played critical roles in some of the bloodiest battles of the 20th century. Troops and equipment carried aboard the ungainly warships established beachheads during the Allied invasions of Sicily, Salerno and Normandy, in the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa in World War II, and many saw more action at Inchon during the Korean War. The LST-325 - which, unlike later LSTs, has no other name - was part of the action at the D-Day invasion of Normandy as well as at Sicily and Salerno.

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