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Article: WWII vets risk safety, spend own money to bring `good ship' home.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- January 7, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SHREVEPORT, La. _ Like so many who would later fight alongside him and die alongside him, Joe Vondran was more boy than man when he first saw the ships that carried him to war half a century ago.
"I went down the shipyard," said Vondran, a South Philadelphia native who is now 81 but can still reach back through the decades to conjure up that day. " ... To my surprise, they were all women. I said, `Geez, I sure hope these girls know what they're doing.' They did. They made some good ships."
Those good ships were the LST _ or Landing Ship, Tank _ a hardworking, flat-bottomed, flat-bed vessel originally built to land tanks and troops on distant shores ...