The Sandscrapers:

An adventure novel dealing primarily with a small segment of amphibious forces of the U.S. Navy during World War II. The volume narrates the loves, intrigues, adventures, successes, failures, lives and deaths of certain crew members aboard a small ship in the little-known and unheralded "Landing Ship Medium (LSM) Program." The story begins at the Charleston, South Carolina Navy Yard, moves on to the Little Creek Amphibious Base at Norfolk, Virginia, and from there through the southwest Pacific theatre of war. The novel ends in the metropolitan area of Washington, D.C. Though the identified ship, its nomenclature, and its crew are fictitious, the class of ship is factual.