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cruise up the Mississippi River, the LST-325's caretakers sought volunteers to man the vessel. Buhl leaped at the chance for a reenlistment of sorts. He was on board when the ship pulled out of Mobile on June 3, even though he had undergone open-heart surgery just seven weeks earlier.
The ship sailed for seven days before docking at Vicksburg, Miss., where it spent four days in port, giving residents a chance to tour the vessel for $10 each, with the proceeds going toward the renovation and maintenance of the ship. Buhl remained aboard as the LST-325 continued to Memphis, and he helped conduct tours there for four days before disembarking for good.
Buhl wasn't able to reprise the exact role he played during his naval duty in World War II. He discovered that the smaller and faster engines on the LST-325 made the engine room too loud for him to stand, and he also had difficulty with the heat. So he volunteered to stand watch on the bridge, a duty he performed from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. each day.
While the LST-325 was docked, Buhl followed his watch shift by leading tours of the ship. That meant eight hours of walking 300 feet from bow to stern and back and climbing ladders to cover the ship's four decks, all while in uniform. He served on the vessel for more than two weeks and never had a day off.
"I put in my 12-hour days and I never was sleepy," Buhl says. "There was always so much to see you never felt tired. Every day was something different. It was exciting. There was always something on the river to see."
For Buhl, those new sights melded with memories of his days spent aboard the LST-494 during World War II. His ship, built in Evansville, Ind., about a year after the LST-325, sailed from New Orleans for the North Atlantic in early 1943. It was one of the first landing ships to arrive at Normandy for D-Day, dispatching troops and artillery from 2 1/2 miles off Fox Beach and receiving "stretcher cases" after the fighting commenced.
The LST-325 also was present at Normandy, though Buhl says he and his crewmates were too preoccupied to take note of any other ships.
After D-Day, Buhl's vessel made several crossings of the English Channel before being stationed in the Mediterranean Sea. When the ship was not under way, Buhl served as a loader for a 20mm gun on the deck.
The LST-494 returned to Boston for maintenance before shipping to the Pacific for the final stages of the war. Buhl's crew was stationed at the conquered Japanese naval base at Sasebo, sweeping the harbor for mines, on V-J Day. He says he often saw Japanese fighter planes soaring past but that his ship had no problem with kamikaze pilots because it was too small to be a valuable target.
When Buhl was discharged in 1946, he was relieved not only to be returning home but also to be free of the LST-494, which fit into the most spartan of the three categories of landing ships constructed during the war.
"That was one of the first ones built, and it wasn't built for com
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