Flagship (Unabridged‪)‬

A ship comes to life when her crew boards her, lights off her boilers, turns on her generators and her electronics, and then pretties her up and takes her to sea. This story follows the amphibious flagship USS Eldorado AGC-11, aging veteran of Iwo Jima and Inchon in 1967 as she faces a new kind of war in Vietnam. The book tells of life on a US Navy ship through the eyes of her crew. 

But it goes deeper; by telling a poignant tale linking a man who helped weld her steel plates and later died at Normandy and his son who served on her in the Vietnam combat zone. In so doing, the story reaches into the very meaning of life.