USS Belleau Wood LHA-3 Patch

The twelve gold stars across the top of this patch are the twelve battle stars USS Belleau Wood CVL-24 earned in World War II, and the gap between the sixth and the seventh is the kamikaze hit she took off Leyte Gulf on 30 October 1944. LHA-3 carried that record forward when she joined the fleet in 1978. She was the third Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship, built by Ingalls Shipbuilding at Pascagoula, Mississippi, with a flight deck for helicopters and Harriers and a well deck for landing craft. Her name goes back to the Marines who fought through the woods near Chateau-Thierry, France, in 1918. The Germans called them Teufelshunde, and the ship took Devil Dog as her mascot.

Belleau Wood was laid down on 5 March 1973, launched on 11 April 1977 and homeported at San Diego from October 1978. On 21 April 1981 her crew rescued 150 Vietnamese refugees at sea, the first of her two Humanitarian Service Medals; the second came from relief work on Kauai after Hurricane Iniki in 1992. That same year she shifted to Sasebo, Japan, as the only forward-deployed large-deck amphibious ship in the world, and on 24 November 1992 she was the last ship to sail out of Subic Bay as U.S. forces left the Philippines. In 1995 she was the command platform for Operation United Shield, and in October 1999 she operated with the Australian-led INTERFET force off East Timor. She deployed for Operation Enduring Freedom in 2002, and in 2004 she led the amphibious ready group that carried the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit to Kuwait.

The patch is a 4 by 5 inch shield with a peaked top and a pointed base. A dark blue band holds the twelve gold stars, split six and six, over USS BELLEAU WOOD in gold block letters. Below it, a red, white and blue tricolor for France carries a gold cross with two crossed swords, the cross of the Croix de Guerre that France awarded to the Marines who fought at Belleau Wood. In a gold disc at the center, a black silhouette of a Marine in World War I battle dress strides forward with rifle and bayonet. The gold point at the bottom reads LHA 3 in blue, the edge is cut to the shield outline, and the back is iron-on.

She could carry about 2,000 Marines with their vehicles, aircraft and landing craft, and for 27 years that was the job. Her crews answered refugee rescues, hurricane relief, evacuations and combat deployments, often with the same Marines on board who had trained for a landing. Fourth Brigade Marines still wear the French fourragère from 1918, and the ship kept that lineage in front of every sailor who reported aboard. Belleau Wood was decommissioned on 28 October 2005. On 13 July 2006 she was sunk as a target off Hawaii during RIMPAC 2006.

Mount it in a shadow box with a Sasebo or San Diego cruise book and a Humanitarian Service Medal, or sew it on the vest you wear to a ship's reunion. It also makes a good gift for a Marine who rode her flight deck to Kuwait or East Timor. It presses on with the iron-on backing, and sewing it down will hold it for good. Twelve stars from one Belleau Wood, worn on the shield of the next.