[6/6/03]When a rare naval ship with a heroic story visits Vicksburg starting Saturday, it will be docking in a town where it’s honored with a model in a local museum.

The LST-325, open to the public at City Front on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, is one of the last two built during World War II. LST stands for landing ship tank, and the vessels are designed to do just that, among other missions.

After the war, it was sold to the Greek Navy in 1964 and served that country as the Syros until the 1990s.

When a group of former LST sailors heard the ship was to be scrapped, they formed LST Memorial Inc., and acquired it in 2000. It was reconditioned in Crete sufficiently that an all-volunteer crew of 29 retired Navy personnel were able to sail it across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to Mobile, where it will be permanently moored as a tribute to the sailors who served aboard LSTs during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The retirees’ efforts to save the ship from extinction has been the topic of books and film documentaries.

The LST-325 left Mobile last month on a 78-day, 3,000-mile trip up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, and, after stopping at Vicksburg, will head to Memphis, St. Louis, Evansville, Ind., Paducah, Ky., Cape Girardeau, Mo., Greenville and back to New Orleans.

The new Vicksburg Battlefield Museum, adjacent to the Battlefield Inn and formerly known the Gray and Blue Naval Museum, actually has an LST model. It is the LST-836 and named for Holmes County.

In addition to the display of the models of the LST-836 and Edsall class destroyer escort, the Battlefield Museum will have on display a flag that was flown on the LST-505 during the Normandy invasion. Today is the 59th anniversary of D-Day when Allied troops went ashore in France to begin the liberation of most of Europe from domination by Nazi Germany.

Both the model of LST-836 and the destroyer escort were built by D&D Precision Modelers of Vicksburg.