On This Day Oct 23, 1983

[thedrifter]

Beirut Death Toll at 161 Americans; French Casualties Rise in Bombings; Reagan Insists Marines Will Remain
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BUILDINGS BLASTED
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Truck Loaded With TNT Wrecks Headquarters of a Marine Unit
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By Thomas L. Friedman
Special to The New York Times


BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 23 -- A suicide terrorist driving a truck loaded with TNT blew up an American Marine headquarters at the Beirut airport today, killing at least 161 marines and sailors and wounding 75.

In an almost simultaneous attack, another bomb- laden truck slammed into a French paratroop barracks two miles away.

According to Lebanese Civil Defense authorities, at least 27 French paratroopers were killed, 12 were wounded and 53 were reported missing and believed buried in rubble. Official Defense Ministry figures issued in Paris listed 12 French soldiers dead, 13 wounded and 48 missing.

It was the highest number of American military personnel killed in a single attack since the Vietnam War. The identity of the attackers still had not been determined tonight.

Truck Loaded With TNT

According to a Pentagon spokesman, a Mercedes truck filled with some 2,500 pounds of TNT broke through a series of steel fences and sandbag barricades and detonated in the heart of the Marines' administrative headquarters building shortly after dawn. The explosion collapsed all four floors of the building, turning it into a burning mound of broken cement pillars and cinder blocks.

Although a marine sentry was able to fire about five shots at the suicide driver and another marine threw himself in front of the speeding, explosive- filled truck, neither could block its entry into the headquarters building, where it exploded in a fireball that left a crater 30 feet deep and 40 feet wide.

In a haunting scene late tonight, rescue workers using blow torches, pneumatic drills and cranes worked furiously under floodlights to pry out the dead and wounded still crushed beneath the smouldering debris. Marine spokesmen said there might have been as many as 300 men sleeping in the building - which doubled as a bunk house - at the time of the blast.

'Carnage' Like That in Vietnam

''I haven't seen carnage like that since Vietnam,'' the Marine spokesman, Maj. Robert Jordan, said shortly after emerging from the rescue operation with his forearms smeared with blood.

Today's blast brought to 170 the number of Americans killed in Lebanon since the bombing of the American Embassy here in April.

Rescue workers were hindered in their movements by unidentified snipers who intermittently fired shots into the Marine compound from the nearby southern suburbs of Beirut. The marines occasionally returned the fire.

Less that two minutes after the attack on the Marine compound, a truck laden with explosives slammed into a building used by the French as a headquarters for one of their 110-man companies in the southern Beirut suburb of Jnah, two miles north of the Marine headquarters. The explosion brought all eight floors down in a heap, like a fallen house of cards.

(A caller to the Beirut office of Agence France Presse said a group calling itself the Free Islamic Revolution Movement took responsibility, United Press International reported. The caller was quoted as saying that two youths carried out the attacks)

The two suicide missions were almost identical to the assault on the American Embassy here on April 18, when a pickup truck slammed into the front lobby and exploded, killing 63 people including 17 Americans. A collection of previously unknown pro-Iranian and pro-Palestinian organizations said they had been responsible for the embassy bombing, but the real identity of the attackers has still not been determined.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/gene...isday_big.html

Sempers,

Roger

[thedrifter]

On Oct. 23, 1983, the people of this nation and others around the globe watched in disbelief and horror as the news came from Beirut Lebanon, of the tragic bombing and the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers, all from Camp Lejeune.



The Beirut Memorial was erected in honor of the military heroes who died keeping the struggle for peace and freedom alive. One granite wall is etched with the names of those who died in Beirut and Grenada and another reads "They came in peace." A brick pedestal holds a bronze plaque inscribed with the poem "The Other Wall" by author Robert Gannon and was dedicated by the families of the Beirut victims in 1991.





The first duty is to remember
Beirut Memorial Ceremony to honor fallen Marines and Sailors

Sharon M. Allen
Special to The Globe

The 19th anniversary of the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Beirut Memorial here.
People from all over the country gather each year at the Beirut Memorial to remember the 241 Marines and Sailors of 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, 24th Marine Amphibious Unit, who lost their lives in that attack.

At 6:22 a.m. Lebanese time, Sunday, Oct. 23, 1983, a five-ton Mercedes truck charged across a parking lot separating the Beirut airport terminal from the temporary U.S. Marine headquarters. After crashing through barbed wire fences and gates, the driver avoided bullets from a sentry’s rifle and drove straight into the building where some 300 Marines slept.

It only took seconds to turn the four-story building into a heap of rubble, where hundreds were crushed under the weight of the broken building. Most of the victims were from Camp Lejeune and New River Air Station. They were members of the Jacksonville community - known as fathers, coaches, church members, Marines, Sailors and heroes.

According to the Beirut Memorial web site, during his speech following the bombing, President Ronald Reagan told a story of something that had happened to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Paul X. Kelley. While visiting injured Marines in a hospital, Kelley met a young wounded Leatherneck who could not see very well, so he reached up to touch the Commandants’ four stars to confirm his identity. The Marine signaled for some paper and on it he wrote ‘Semper Fi.’

President Reagan stated to the nation in his speech that “Marines give willingly of themselves so that a nearly defenseless people in a region of great strategic importance to the free world will have a chance someday to live lives free of murder and mayhem and terrorism.

“I think that young Marine and all of his comrades have given every one of us something to live up to. We cannot and will not dishonor them now and the sacrifices they’ve made by failing to remain as faithful to the cause of freedom and the pursuit of peace as they have been.”

When President Reagan spoke those words, he did not realize that 18 years later, the U.S. would once again face acts of terrorism and be called upon to sacrifice more Americans for the cause of freedom and the pursuit of peace.

Also in his speech, President Reagan spoke of Dr. Kenneth Morrison, the father of a Marine in Lebanon. Morrison told Reagan, “In a world where we speak of human rights, there is a sad lack of acceptance of responsibility. My son has chosen the acceptance of responsibility for the privilege of living in this country. Certainly in this country one does not inherently have rights unless the responsibility for those rights is accepted.”

Reagan also quoted Sam Rayburn who once said that freedom is not something a nation can work for once and win forever. He said it’s like an insurance policy; its premiums must be kept up to date. In order to keep it, we have to keep working for it and sacrificing for it just as long as we live. If we do not, our children may not know the pleasure of working to keep it, for it may not be theirs to keep.

Although there are those in the world who do not approve of American way of life and wish to take it away, the U.S. is a free land. Millions have died to give Americans that right.

In addition to the commemorative events at the memorial, there will be a Beirut Memorial 10K run held October 20 at 8:00 a.m. at the Camp Johnson Gymnasium. For more information, call 451-1799.



Two hundred and forty-four Bradford pear trees are planted along Lejeune to represent each of the lives lost in the Beirut bombing and the lives of the Marine pilots killed in Grenada. The Beirut Memorial is located in a hilly dogwood and oak forest off N.C. 24 (Lejeune Boulevard) at the entrance to Camp Johnson. Each year, a memorial service is held on Oct. 23 to honor those who gave their lives.


Sempers,

Roger

[top1371]

Don't let us forget.......









Semper Fi,

Top

[thedrifter]

Run : 10/24/2002
Beirut Memorial stirs memories, emotions


Randy Davey/Freedom ENC
This unidentified woman touches a name on the Beirut Memorial wall.
JACKSONVILLE -- Nineteen years ago, 241 local servicemen on a peacekeeping mission in Beirut, Lebanon, died in a single day when a terrorist drove a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of explosives into the headquarters of 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment attached to the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit.

Relatives and friends of the victims were brought together during the tragic loss. From their great sorrow, many have managed to put their lives back together in ways that are forever intertwined.

Retired Maj. Bob Jordan is one of them. He talked about his experience during the annual Beirut Memorial Service Wednesday in Jacksonville.

Jordan was a public affairs officer who not only had to tell the rest of the world what happened to servicemen lost that day, but also dug through rubble for over a week looking for survivors.

Jordan recalled John Chipura, whose name is not on the wall at the Beirut Memorial near the entrance to Camp Johnson.

"He and I dug through the rubble to look for survivors," Jordan said. "He later became a New York Police Department street cop who wanted to clean up the neighborhood."

Wanting to follow in the footsteps of his relatives, Chipura in 1998 became a firefighter with Engine Company 219 of the New York City Fire Department.

http://www.newbernsunjournal.com/pri...m?StoryID=5089


Sempers,

Roger

[DevilDog1]

For this thread, it really brings back all my memories of those times, now" lets roll " !!!!!!!!!!!!

[gyrene79]

I was with wpns co.1/2 when this happened we had been in Oki.
mabye two days when we got the news,,Then even worse news
for me,I started searching the names down in the m.i.a. part
of the paper was my bestest buddys name I was devestated
and then we didnt do anything about it and that made it worse.


R.I.P. 24TH MAU.
AND MY BUD,,,Sgt Richard Blankinship

Gyrene 79

[aaron1965]

This event was the reason I joined the Corps. I honor the memory of those Marines that died at the hands of such cowards.