USS Dubuque LPD-8 Transport Dock Ship Patch

The brown stone tower stitched inside the 8 is the tower over the grave of Julien Dubuque, founder of Dubuque, Iowa. The two gold stars flanking it count the two ships that have carried the city's name, the gunboat Dubuque PG-17 and the amphibious transport dock LPD-8. USS Dubuque LPD-8 was an Austin-class LPD built by Ingalls Shipbuilding at Pascagoula, Mississippi. She was commissioned at Norfolk on 1 September 1967 and decommissioned on 30 June 2011. In between, she carried Marines, their gear and their landing craft for almost 44 years.

In 1973 she worked with Task Force 78 in Operation End Sweep, clearing mines from North Vietnamese waters, and on 17 March helped rescue most of the crew of the minesweeper USS Enhance MSO-437. In April 1975 she was offshore for Operation Frequent Wind, refueling helicopters that were flying evacuees, and returned to Subic Bay on 4 May. After years homeported in San Diego she shifted to Sasebo, Japan, in 1985. In 1988 she served as a control ship for minesweeping in the Persian Gulf, and in December 1998 she sailed with the Belleau Wood Amphibious Ready Group during Operation Desert Fox. She deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and in September 2010 she took part in the recapture of the merchant ship Magellan Star from pirates in the Gulf of Aden.

The patch is a 4 by 5 inch shield with a black border and a white field. U.S.S. DUBUQUE and LPD run across the top in black block letters, and the hull number fills the center as a big blue 8. A gold sword with a red grip cuts diagonally behind the 8, and the tower sits in its lower loop. Gold stars flank it on both sides, and a red-and-gold scroll across the bottom carries the ship's motto, OUR COUNTRY HERITAGE & FUTURE, a line created by a member of her commissioning crew. The edge is cut to the shield outline and the back is iron-on.

An LPD does two jobs at once, part troop transport and part floating dock, with a well deck for landing craft and a flight deck for helicopters. Dubuque's crews did both for more than four decades, from the minefields off North Vietnam to the pirate waters of the Gulf of Aden. Her deck crews and Marines worked through a Saigon evacuation, a Persian Gulf minesweeping operation and the opening months of Iraqi Freedom. Generations of sailors called her home, first from San Diego and then from Sasebo. That is a long run for any hull, and her motto was written by one of the first sailors aboard.

Put it in a shadow box with a cruise book and a ribbon rack, or on the vest a Dubuque sailor wears to a reunion. It also makes a solid gift for a Marine who rode her well deck to the beach, or for the family of a plank owner. Sew it on for keeps or press it on with the iron-on backing. A gator freighter's whole career, from 1967 to 2011, on one shield.