MARINE BARRACKS BEIRUT

[OLDNAVYMCPO]

On this very day, 35 years ago, the Beirut Marine Barracks were bombed by terrorist.

241 US service members murdered. 220 Marines, the remaining 21 from other services.

The bombing took place when a truck ladened with 2,000 pounds of explosives crashes into the barracks of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regimental Battalion Landing Team.

Simultaneously, a suicide bomber drove an explosive loaded truck into a building of French paratroopers, 58 killed.

The terrorist organization Hezbollah was found responsible with backing from Iran and Syria.

35 years later and not much has really changed in that part of the world. Same insanity and chaos, same actors playing the same games, still unpunished.

 

[chiefbob81]

I remember the day well. Another attack we never got any satisfaction in retaliation. Sad day!

 

[Rudi]

We must never forget. SEMPER FI!!

 

[yaktamer]

I was in Army basic training at the time. Drill sergeants used news of this and the Grenada invasion two days later to motivate the slackers to start taking things seriously.

 

[Muley Gil]

I usually re-post this on Memorial Day:

http://smith-wessonforum.com/lounge/476955-rip-capt-bill-winter-usmc.html?476955=#post139107741

My prayers go out to the families of all those that lost loved ones that day.

 

[Protocall_Design]

Nothing has changed over there in hundreds or thousands of years, except the technology (mostly borrowed from us).

 

[cherrypointmarine]

To all our comrades in arms that have fallen , Semper Fi .

 

[tlawler]

Wow...I sure remember that day. I was still onboard the Brewton and berthed at our homeport NAVSTA Pearl Harbor. Our Marine gate guards were more stoic than usual and we treated them with a little more respect than usual in the following weeks. I later served with a guy who was on the New Jersey and talked about "payback day" when the Jersey sat offshore from Lebanon and pounded Hezbollah positions with it's 16" guns. I think he said they expended almost a thousand shells.

 

[hoc9sw]

A young lady who worked for me at the time lost her husband in that attack.
Brings back some very difficult memories.

 

[hostler]

One of my drill instructors was in the barracks during the attack. Obviously he lived but he was injured. He also had a serious case of PTSD.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

I was talking with a Marine that did a foot patrol in Beirut 3 weeks after the bombing. As he walked the streets there were almost no civilians. Then it dawned on him, the texture in the masonry showed the silhouettes of people sitting and standing along the street edges. The flechete (sp) rounds had nailed the people in the neighborhood the van drove from! A very fitting form of "Thank You" greeting!

Ivan

 

[Stevens]

The USS New Jersey and others paid them back pretty well, but never enough to make up for the Marines and others cowardly killed in the barracks.
Steve W

 

[Oldfrt]

I spent a few months on a cruiser off the coast back then.

 

[Kanewpadle]

I remember the day too. Every US military installation on the planet went on alert and stayed there for a while.

 

[vonn]

Only one cure for some areas of today's world.

 

[onebadvet]

I also remember that day very well, it was sad day when we loose brothers in arms.

 

[vigil617]

A Marine guard at the front gate of Naval Station Norfolk drew to attention and snapped off a sharp salute to a Coast Guard officer driving through on the day after the attack.

That officer could not help but stop and express his sorrow about the Marine's loss of so many comrades in Lebanon.

Stoic and resolute, the young Marine listened and then simply replied, "Thank you, sir."

So long ago. Such a terrible day. We all lost brothers.

 

[HOUSTON RICK]

A Marine friend of mine was there that I mentioned before. He survived that and a LAMPS helicopter crash(or crashes?) into the Mediterranean only to die in a car wreck at route 4 and Princeton Pike (Tri-County Mall) in northern Hamilton County, Ohio shortly after getting back and a few miles from home and a few months before his first child was born. Rest in Peace, Mark!

 

[gr8]

I later served with a guy who was on the New Jersey and talked about "payback day" when the Jersey sat offshore from Lebanon and pounded Hezbollah positions with it's 16" guns. I think he said they expended almost a thousand shells.

Op, A terrible day for the entire free world.

Not to take away from the spirit of this thread. That last part of the above thread might be a little misleading. It may have been thousands of rounds from her smaller guns.


Wikipedia states:

On 14 December, New Jersey fired 11 projectiles from her 16-inch (406 mm) guns at hostile positions inland of Beirut. These were the first 16-inch (406 mm) shells fired for effect anywhere in the world since New Jersey ended her time on the gunline in Vietnam in 1969.

 

[joe44va]

I was in Beirut 15 years before that. It sucked and was scary even then. Don't ever see a need to go back. Brings back a couple of really bad memories. Thank you MARINES.