Our First Duty: To Remember the Sacrifices of Beirut
by LtCol Charles A. Dallachie
Memorials should not fade into obscurity.
For Marines, great victories, great defeats, and great sacrifaces are never forgotten but are remembered with battle streamers attached to unit colors. Unfortunately, there are no battle streamers to remember the ultimate sacrifice made by Marines and sailors in Beirut in 1983.
In the very early morning of 23 October 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon, a building serving as the command post for the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines was hit by a suicide bomber driving a stake bed truck loaded with compressed gas-enhanced explosives. The explosion and collapse of the building killed 241 Marines, sailors, and soldiers. Bomb experts who examined the blast called the approximately 12,000 pounds of explosives the largest nonnuclear explosion in history. For the Marines, it was the biggest loss of life in a single day since the Corps fought the Japanese on Iwo Jima in World War II.
In 1982, Lebanon, the country once known as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” because of its European flavor, its prosperous economy, and its ethnic diversity and tolerance, was mired in a bloody ethnic and religious conflict that would permanently destroy its character. It would leave its people shattered and demoralized to this day.
After repeated Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) cross-border attacks from strongholds in southern Lebanon into villages in northern Israel, in June 1982, the Israeli Defense Forces launched Operation PEACE FOR GALILEE. Throughout the summer of 1982, CNN [Cable News Network] brought to the world’s living rooms images of Israeli air and artillery pounding heavily populated Beirut as they sought to destroy the PLO fighters surrounded in the city by the Israeli forces. The terrible suffering—more than 12,000 killed in 70 days—caused Beirut to become the center of worldwide attention.
At the request of the Lebanese Government, the United States, along with Britain, France, and Italy, inserted a multinational peacekeeping force into Beirut hoping its “presence” would provide a measure of stability to help the Lebanese Government get back on its feet. Unfortunately, America was sticking its hand into a 1,000-year-old hornet’s nest.
By the summer of 1983 as diplomatic efforts failed to achieve a basis for lasting settlement, the Moslem factions came to perceive the Marines as enemies. This led to artillery, mortar, and small arms fire being directed at Marine positions—with the Marines responding in kind against identified targets. By mid-October, just before being introduced to a new and deadly weapon—the suicide truck bomber—7 Marines had been killed and 26 injured.
 |
| Names of the servicemembers who died in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, are engraved in marble at the Beirut Memorial on Camp Johnson, NC. |
Immediately following the tragedy, the residents of Jacksonville, NC, expressed an outpouring of grief and support for the families and loved ones of the Marines and sailors who had been killed. Part of that support included raising funds for a memorial to honor those who had died in Lebanon during the peacekeeping mission. Today, near the entrance to Camp Johnson, a subsidiary base of the overall Camp Lejeune complex, a memorial wall now permanently stands nestled among some Carolina pine trees.
The wall was completed on 23 October 1986. It is similar to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, as it bears a list of those Americans who died in Lebanon. Only four words are inscribed on the wall: “They Came in Peace.”
In 1988 a statue was added to the wall. It represents a lone Marine keeping vigil over his fellow Marines. In addition to the wall, the residents of Jacksonville planted a Bradford pear tree on the center median along Lejeune Boulevard on Highway 24 for each man killed in the explosion.
A Marine officer, now retired, tells the story of when in August 1992, while still on active duty and traveling to Camp Lejeune, he couldn’t help but notice the trees that line the middle of the road. Knowing that each tree was dedicated to an individual Marine, sailor, or soldier who had lost his life in Lebanon, he felt saddened as the vehicle sped past tree, after tree, after tree. Before arriving at the main gate he asked his young Marine driver if he knew the significance of those trees. The Marine quickly looked at a few of the trees as he sped past them and then looked over to the passenger and said very matter-of-factly, “Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never noticed them before. I guess they’re just trees.”
The Bradford pear seedlings have grown since first planted and, as evidenced by the young Marine’s comment, their growth has been somewhat meaningless to those who were either too young to remember that October 1983 tragedy or those who had never been told of their significance. It is somewhat ironic that a young Marine, of all people, could have been so cavalier in his response, because if anyone should be concerned about what happened in Beirut, it is the Marines who are and will be stationed with the Operating Forces.
Unfortunately, in October 1983, the vast majority of Americans had little knowledge of, less interest in, and no great concern with what was going on in Beirut—it was so far away. Today, let us honor but also learn from the sacrifices of those who have gone before, so we do not give the citizens of Jacksonville a reason to plant more trees along a stretch of highway that leads to the main gate of their military base.
>At the time that this article was first published in the Gazette in October 2001, LtCol Dallachie, a veteran of Beirut, was assigned to the Joint Staff (J–4) at the Pentagon.
