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thedrifter
10-01-08, 08:02 AM
Retired Marine begins remembrance walk today in Virginia Beach

08:01 AM EDT on Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Reported by: Carl Leimer

A retired Marine Corps Sergeant will begin a remembrance walk Wednesday to honor more than 200 American troops killed in a terrorist attack on U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983.

Paul “Doc” Doolittle will start his journey at the VFW on Bowland Parkway in Virginia Beach and 22 days from now he will end up at the Beirut Memorial at Camp Lejuene on the 25th anniversary of the bombing.

Retired Marine Doc Doolittle has taken it upon himself to make sure that those who died are not forgotten in this special anniversary year.

October 23rd will mark a quarter century since the deadly terrorist attack on the marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. 241 service members were killed, most of them Marines.

Doolittle’s remembrance walk from Virginia Beach to Jacksonville, North Carolina is a total of 271 miles. That equals to one mile for each service member killed in Lebanon from 1982 to 1984.

Doolittle spent time in Beirut himself as a marine security guard.

Though he didn't know anyone that died in the attack, he still feels a tie to his fallen brothers and wants to honor them and their families.

"I've met a number of family members online and have never met them personally but in about 3 weeks I will have face to face contact with people who lost someone that day," said Doolittle.

Organizers hope to give Doc Doolittle a big sendoff.

They are also collecting donations of $10 or more to help pay for expenses, and raise money for a couple of Marine charities.

Video

http://www.wvec.com/video/index.html?nvid=288245

Ellie

thedrifter
10-20-08, 08:52 AM
A loss measured in miles
Comments 0 | Recommend 4
October 20, 2008 - 1:04AM
MOLLY K. DEWITT
The Daily News

For Steven Ayers, every step has a purpose and every mile has a memory.

After traveling on foot for 19 days from Virginia Beach, Va., to Jacksonville, Ayers, 49, will end his 241-mile journey Thursday.

He will have walked one mile in remembrance of each service member who died 25 years ago during the bombing of a Marine compound in Beirut, Lebanon.

"It's the smallest sacrifice I can do to honor the largest sacrifice someone can give," Ayers said over the weekend as he made his walk to Jacksonville.

Ayers, a Navy veteran and resident of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., said he began planning the walk about three years ago on a grander scale, but ideas for a larger endeavor fell through and he almost gave up.

But he and former Marine Paul "Doc" Doolittle, who served as an embassy guard in Beirut in 1985, decided to make the walk together.

The two have averaged about 12 miles a day, running into the worst weather in Onslow County over the weekend.

"The first day was tough, the second day was worse and it's been great ever since," Ayers said.

This is not, however, the first time Ayers has walked for the cause. Two years ago he walked 241 laps around a track, walking for three days straight with no sleep. Last year he walked 241 miles in 22 days by circling around a parking lot.

On Oct. 23, 1983, Ayers, a former petty officer second class, was stationed aboard the USS Portland. As part of the Mediterranean Amphibious Readiness Group, he was about 1,500 yards off the Lebanese coastline in support of Marines on a peacekeeping mission in Beirut. He was standing on the ship's signal bridge when he and fellow crew members heard a loud blast.

"First, we kind of flinched like we'd been hit. It was that loud," he said. "When we realized what it was - we saw explosions all the time - but nothing this big, nothing this large."

After the blast, Ayers said radio activity picked up with requests "for every body container and every body bag in the Mediterranean."

"Then I knew it was bad," he said.

Ayers took part in the cleanup and aftermath of the bombing and found something near what would have been the communication room that he said was the hardest part of the entire experience.

"When I was in Beirut I found a message that was from mobile CIA that warned of an attack on the 22, 23, or 24 ... that kind of upset me," he said.

Ayers said he doesn't consider himself a conspiracy theorist, but finding the message was devastating.

"I read a report that said it was a vague warning. I got kind of angry ... ," he said. "Somebody let them die, that's what I felt."

Ayers began to question the trust he put in his superiors and the military as a whole after finding the message, he said.

"Being in the military, you put your faith in them," he said. "It kind of shatters everything to the core and that's what happened to me."

Upon returning to the United States - and for years after - Ayers said he tried to put the past behind him. He threw away physical mementos of his time spent there and tried to avoid the memories.

"From the day I got back I wrote it off. I didn't want anything to do with Beirut anymore, it was a bad memory," he said.

He also lost much of his memory from that time.

"I couldn't tell you how long I was on the building ... I don't remember leaving the building and I don't remember but maybe a few snapshots on the way home. I remember everything up until that point like it happened yesterday," he said. "If somebody could just tell me how I left that building, I don't even remember how I got back to the ship."

For Ayers, the walk is as much about remembering the lives lost as it is about personal healing, he said.

"I found out years ago every time I walked it seemed to make me heal better and it made me think," he said. "My goal is this walk, come down here ... go back to Beirut in my mind if I could and maybe get that part of me back that I lost."

As Ayers traveled down N.C. 24 toward Jacksonville on Saturday he said the walk had already revived memories he thought were lost forever.

"We have a line in the history books - it's a much bigger event than that. It was one of the first terrorist attacks in this country. It wasn't on our soil but it was against our people," he said. "In my opinion ... that was the first shot in the war on terror. I'm just trying to remind people that this isn't something that's going to be easily won. If you know your history, you won't repeat it."

Contact Jacksonville/Onslow government reporter Molly DeWitt at 910-219-8455 or mdewitt@freedomenc.com.

Ellie