Enduring a memory - Beirut bombing survivor: His duty is to remember

By Tony Gonzalez

Published: October 27, 2008

Danny Eaves lives on a secluded four-acre plot in Waynesboro, gardening, raising cattle and pigs and enduring the memory of a day neatly tucked away in the pages of history.

Then a Marine corporal, Eaves lay sleeping in his bunk on the Sunday morning 25 years ago when a truck laden with explosives barreled into a U.S. barracks at Beirut’s international airport. The blast killed 241 American servicemen, 220 of them Marines.

“The first duty is to remember, no matter how painful,” Eaves, 45, said Monday, echoing the Beirut Veterans of America slogan.

Eaves last week felt anew the sting of that day, Oct. 23, 1983. On Thursday, he joined 1,000 Marines and others at Camp Lejeune, N.C., to honor Beirut’s fallen. Eaves and his fellow Marines were sent to Lebanon as part of an international peacekeeping force in a country shredded by civil war between Muslims and Christians aligned with Israel.

Until Sept. 11, 2001, it was the deadliest terrorist attack on Americans in history. It produced the largest single-day death toll among Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima.

The annual gathering at Camp Lejeune is a way to “do what I was asked to do ... which is to remember,” Eaves said. “For years I said, ‘Forget it.’ ”

For Eaves, the father of an active Marine son headed to Iraq in March, that day’s horrors still linger 25 years later.

He was 75 feet away from the four-story Marine barracks leveled by the explosion from the 19-ton truck. The blast ripped a crater eight feet deep.

“I woke up on the ground, shaking, with beams on me,” Eaves said.

It is remembered among the darkest days of the Reagan era. The president pulled troops from Beirut shortly after the bombing. Earlier this year, Republican presidential nominee John McCain recalled his angst when as a young congressman, he broke ranks from Reagan, opposing the burgeoning conservative icon’s plan to send soldiers and sailors to war-torn Lebanon.

Carried out by an Iranian and later blamed on terrorist elements that would eventually form into Hezbollah, the bombing proved a precursor to terrorist attacks to follow in that decade and the 1990s, culminating with Sept 11.

During a short trip home in December 1983, Eaves vowed to a News Virginian reporter that he would settle down in town after his tour of duty. True to his word, he has.

But he rarely ventures into town. Close friends gathered at his home Monday night to watch football.

On a white table in his living room, Eaves keeps photos and medals from his military days. An image of himself and a fellow Marine on his refrigerator often captures his gaze. In it, Eaves holds shrapnel. His friend bites another fragment.

Eaves learned at this year’s reunion that his buddy had passed away.

“These were my friends,” Eaves said. “All of a sudden, 241 are dead. I owe it to them to put aside some of my things and push through it.”

Ellie