Haunted by the Beirut barracks bombing....

[Phantom Blooper]

Haunted by the Beirut barracks bombing

Bonnie Tierney identified the victims for three weeks, 25 years ago.
By Howard Pankratz
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 10/20/2008 12:31:26 AM MDT



Reserve Air Force Major Bonnie Tierney, who was the mass casualty officer in charge of the identification process of the U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers killed on Oct. 23, 1983, at the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. A total of 241 American servicemen were killed - 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel, and three Army soldiers. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)




For three weeks in the fall of 1983, Bonnie Tierney worked in a massive green tent identifying the victims of a terrorist attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut.
A truck bomb had targeted the barracks Oct. 23, 1983, killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers there as part of an international peacekeeping force during Lebanon's civil war.
Tierney was a young lieutenant and the mass casualty officer at Rhein Main Air Force Base in Frankfurt, Germany. As commanding officer, she felt she had to show no emotion to the young volunteers she directed during the 21-day identification process.
Now, she cries about those days.
She also has post-traumatic stress disorder and takes anti-psychotic medication to battle suicidal urges.
"I held it in for 20 years," said Tierney, currently facilities-management administration officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Denver. "I didn't talk about it, and I found myself going towards Pikes Peak with my little Honda where I was going to commit suicide. I don't mind people knowing that, and I don't mind people knowing that I'm on medication."
She remembers the day she and another serviceman picked up a body bag and a leg fell out.
"I grabbed the leg, and when I grabbed the leg, my fingers went inside. It was all decayed," Tierney said.
Then there was the day she saw the complete body — a rarity — of a young, muscular Marine.
"I realized I'm not just dealing with body parts, I'm dealing with humans," Tierney said. "You will never be the same ... and you have to learn to live with what you endured."
Tierney's memories are haunting. Terrorist attacks — whether the Oklahoma City bombing, the bombing of buses in London or the attack on New York's World Trade Center — cause her to flash back to the tent in Germany.
She wrote a book a couple of years back. And she's not the only one with memories linked to that Sunday morning 25 years ago.
Randy Gaddo was a combat correspondent in Beirut for the Marines.
A staff sergeant at the time, he had gotten up early that day to develop film he had shot the night before of a USO tour featuring a country-western band.
Gaddo was headed toward the barracks but stopped by the combat-operations center for a cup of coffee.
He was sitting at a field desk when he heard shots. A couple of seconds later, the ground shook, and there was a deep thud and a rush of warm air that picked him up and hurled him backward.
The blast pancaked the four-story building into about a story and a half.
"There were three or four of us, including a chaplain. We could see a body on the lowest floor," Gaddo said. "We saw his legs, but the rest of his body was crushed. He was thrashing around. It lasted a few seconds and stopped. We looked at each other. There was nothing we could do."
Marine Col. Timothy Geraghty, commander of the American ground forces in Lebanon, was in his quarters above the combat-operations center when the bomb went off at 6:22 a.m.
Geraghty grabbed his flak vest, weapon and helmet, ran outside and was blinded by a "gray fog of ash."
"There was a very sickening feeling in my gut," Geraghty said. "I realized that we had over 300 people in that hardened structure. I knew we had taken heavy casualties."
On Thursday, there will be an elaborate ceremony at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C., honoring the men killed in the Beirut barracks.
Tierney has been invited. But she said she probably won't go. It would be too hard for her.
She sometimes cries when she sees a Marine.
"When I see them in uniform, I, of course, (think of) the tents," she said. "So I don't see them as Marines; I see them as body parts. I see faces; I see hands; I see feet.
"There was a . . . mother who contacted me, and she said, 'You know, you were the last person to see my son,' " Tierney recalled.
She disagrees.
Tierney wants the families to remember their loved ones as they were when they were alive — not what she saw in a Frankfurt tent. Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com

[yellowwing]

God Bless you Bonnie Tierney. Many years from now those same 240 Marines will thank you for your dedication. For now we can shed a tear and hug you in our heart. Its going to be alright. Amen.

[revslev]

Semper Fi all...

I was stationed at NAS Cecil Field during the bombing, I had to bury 24 Marines after that (most of them from the bombing). It took me over 20 years to get the faces from the funerals out of my head. Recently the VA called me back in to re-evaluate an old (now called) TBI. All the images and feelings of rage are back. What a waste...the ones I remember most were so young, had so much to offer. The one that haunts me the most is where we were playing TAPS and his little 3 year old said: "Goodbye Daddy". Never let them be forgotten...I know I can't, and never will.