Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek Virginia Beach Gator Patch

Amphibious sailors call themselves the gator Navy, and Little Creek is their East Coast home base, so the mascot on this patch is a green gator in a sailor's white cover and jumper. Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek sits on the Chesapeake Bay side of Virginia Beach, Virginia. The first Navy truck rolled onto a bean field on the Whitehurst farm there on 16 July 1942. Within a few years the place was training the crews who put troops ashore in Europe and the Pacific. For generations of sailors, Little Creek is where the amphibious Navy learned its trade.

During World War II four separate bases occupied the ground: Camp Bradford, where Seabees trained and later LST crews; Camp Shelton, for armed guard training; the U.S. Naval Frontier Base, which forwarded men and equipment to Europe; and the Amphibious Training Base, the original Little Creek. Crews for LSTs, LSMs, LCIs, LCUs, LCMs and LCVPs all came through. After the war the four were consolidated as Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, commissioned on 10 August 1945, and made a permanent base in 1946. In 2009 it joined Fort Story to form Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story. Today the base supports more than 14,400 personnel across 132 resident commands.

This is a round patch with a navy blue field and a navy blue border. The gator stands upright in the middle, green with white claws, grinning with a mouth full of teeth, a white sailor's cover cocked on his head. He wears a navy jumper and leans his arms on the big yellow letters LITTLE CREEK that run straight across the patch, outlined in green. A yellow outline traces the whole gator so he stands off the dark field.

It measures 4 inches wide by 4 inches tall. The border is a merrowed edge, a raised rolled stitch in navy blue thread. The backing is iron-on: press it to cotton or denim with a household iron, then add a few stitches around the edge for anything that goes through the wash often. The colors are solid thread in navy, green, yellow, white and black, easy to read from across a room.

Anyone who reported to Little Creek remembers the gate, the piers and the gators on everything. Sew this on the jacket you wear to a ship's reunion, put it on a sea bag, or mount it in a shadow box with your amphibious ship patches and your plank owner certificate. It is a good gift for a shipmate who rode the gator Navy out of Virginia Beach. It belongs on the gear of anyone who served in the amphibious Navy.