USS Independence off Peleliu
Commander Doug Bland understood clearly and unequivocally for the first time in twenty years of service as a naval officer why he’d remained a surface warrior in spite of several career enhancing opportunities to go for submarines, aviation or special warfare. He was in a fight and in command of a warship. It wasn’t Nelson at Trafalgar or Bull Halsey in the Solomons but Commander, by God, Doug Bland out of Ceiling, Oklahoma, via the U.S. Naval Academy, was large and in charge of a no-s**t sea-based combat operation with nary a gravel-crunching soldier in sight.
Standing on his ship’s bridge wing and watching his heavily armed and highly motivated sailors scramble to launch two small craft for the trip to Peleliu where SEALs had requested backup, he wondered h
