Thread: A preview of terror : Beirut, Lebanon, Oct. 23, 1983

Baton Rougean sees attack on Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, 20 years ago Thursday as the opening shot in today's worldwide struggle for security

By PENNY BROWN ROBERTS

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/...arine001.shtml

Lee Huss hasn't forgotten the uncomfortable role of soldier playing peacekeeper in a hostile Middle Eastern land.
He hasn't forgotten the seemingly inconsequential choice he made that saved his life. Or the rows upon rows of dead soldiers laid out in the gut of an abandoned hangar being used as a morgue -- some of them in body bags; some of them not.

The date: Oct. 23, 1983. The place: Beirut, Lebanon.

And the beginning -- Huss says with much conviction -- of the current state of affairs in Iraq.

"I really think this was the opening salvo in what we've got going on around here now," Huss said. "It was the first time since World War II that we had a suicide plan against a large group of Americans, and I think it was a preview of things to come."

Huss -- now the supervisory senior resident agent for the FBI in Baton Rouge -- was a captain in the Marines stationed in Lebanon in fall 1983 when 241 soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber.

The 47-year-old still feels passionately about the event that took place two decades ago this week.

Lives were lost. Lives were changed. And that, Huss says -- at times pausing to maintain his composure -- must never be forgotten, for there are lessons to be learned from the experience.

"Slowly whittling away at our troops and our will and our determination is meant to get us out of there," Huss said, comparing his experience in Beirut and the current situation in Iraq. "It's a horrible price to pay, but Americans have to decide whether it is worth the price."

In summer 1983, the United States had agreed to establish a military presence in Lebanon to serve as a peacekeeping force in the conflict between warring Muslim and Christian factions.

A Mercedes truck filled with 2,500 pounds of TNT broke through a series of steel fences and sandbag barricades and exploded in the lobby of the Marines' administrative headquarters building shortly after dawn.

The fireball collapsed all four floors of the building, turning it into a burning mound of broken cement pillars and cinder blocks -- and leaving a crater 30 feet deep and 40 feet wide.

It was the highest number of American military personnel killed in a single attack since the Vietnam War.

"Three years ago I went to the Beirut Memorial and while I was looking at all the names on the wall, I thought, 'I'm 44 years old and nobody on that wall made it to my age,'" Huss said. "That puts things in perspective. I've had twice the life that most of those people had."

Huss -- a Des Moines, Iowa, native -- joined the Marines in 1978 after graduating with a criminal justice degree from Iowa State University. He pursued his dream of being a pilot, attending flight school and earning his wings in October 1980.

He was deployed in the Mediterranean on the day Israel invaded Lebanon. He said he remembers wondering whether that would be his next assignment.

It was.

Less than a month after the American embassy was bombed in April, Huss' helicopter squadron arrived in Beirut in May 1983 -- culture-shocked and equipped with little training as peacekeepers.

The once-thriving city was filled with bombed and bullet-riddled buildings. Muslims and Christians would work together during the day and shoot it out at night.

At first, the Marines would just watch.

"That, as an American, is hard to understand. It was a tenuous environment, and we were doing a job that we were trying to make sense out of," Huss said. "As far as parking ourselves in a country between two people who were at each other's throats, there wasn't a lot of training for that. Marines were taught to find the enemy and confront them; not sit and watch them."

The Marines stationed in Beirut were, Huss notes -- considering America's role in Somalia, Grenada and now post-war Iraq -- the first modern peacekeepers. But keeping the peace became more of a challenge, Huss said, as artillery and mortar attacks on the Marines escalated throughout the summer and into the fall.

First, a noncommissioned officer and a lieutenant were killed. After that, soldiers steadily dropped, one and two at a time.

"There was almost a feeling of, 'Don't people understand? We're not here to hurt anybody or cause any harm,'" Huss said. "I have to admit a little bit of anger ... a bunch of anger. But as far as wanting to go home and say, 'Forget it, let's get out of here,' there was none of that."

On Friday, Oct. 21, the Marines were making plans for "holiday routine" -- their first break from flying in 71/2 months. Huss said he had a choice: Stay ashore or go back to the ship. Enticed by the prospect of air conditioning and eating food off a plate, he chose the latter.

He said he spent Saturday doing maintenance on aircraft -- staying up until 3 a.m. working on a transmission.

At 7 a.m. came the news: The sand-colored, four-story barracks had been hit -- and dozens of Marines were injured or dead.

He said a call came over the radio for 30 body bags. An hour later, the first aircraft started landing on the ship with the injured. A second call came on the radio: Send about 100 more body bags.

Huss' voice begins to waver, and so he pauses for a moment. "I've got to tell you, it was chaos," he continued. "When that building went up, everybody was either killed or hurt so bad they couldn't do anything for themselves. There was no leadership on site for a while."

He said that while waiting in flight suit and survival gear to begin flying the dead and injured from shore to the ship, he went down into the hangar, a cavernous area under the flight deck.

There, he saw row upon row of the dead and injured laid out on the deck. And he watched a physician who had no time to don surgical gloves or mask with one hand inside a victim's abdominal cavity, the other palpitating the abdomen of a second victim, talking to a third person over his shoulder.

"There were some guys laying on the floor who had been crushed by concrete, a leg or two at a right angle, a limb split open with a bone showing," Huss said. "I remember standing around this one group of guys on the floor and thinking, 'This smells just like hamburger.'"

Huss and others spent their days flying back and forth between the destruction and the ship, carrying supplies, victims and bodies. Their nights were dedicated to digging in the rubble of the barracks -- sometimes sniffing the ground to locate the dead.

As an officer, Huss was in charge of ensuring that dead Marines were placed in caskets so they could be loaded onto the planes head-first in keeping with military tradition.

"Remember when you were a kid and you saw a monster movie, and you thought if you saw something scary a little bit at a time you'd be better?" Huss said. "That's the way that thing was. I didn't ever pop a lid and look right in there. It was always, open, start at one end and go slow until I saw the whole thing."

When soldiers brought what they believed to be the remains of the son of a commanding general, Huss declined to view them. It's a decision he says he now regrets.

After President Reagan ordered the troops "redeployed," there were numerous investigations into the bombing -- including a congressional commission. A former Israeli intelligence officer alleged the Israelis knew of an impending attack but withheld information in hopes of poisoning Arab-American relations. The theory was detailed in his book, "By Way of Deception."

"A lot of us had our own ideas about why this happened," Huss said. "The bottom line is that it did happen. So let's learn from it and move on. We were all very tight-lipped and cynical about the powers that be trying to affix blame."

Huss isn't asking for any grand gestures on Thursday -- the anniversary of the bombing of the Marine barracks. All he asks is that people remember. Just for a moment.

"Memorials and parades are not necessary," Huss said. "But every now and then, it would be nice if some guy squeezing some gas into his car goes over and buys the paper on the 23rd of October and says, 'I remember when that happened,' and then goes on about his life."

Marine Corps News -- http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn20...p/200110189503


Arlington National Cemetery -- www.arlingtoncemetery.net/terror.htm


Beirut Memorial On Line -- www.beirut-memorial.org/history


Frontline: Target America -- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl.../etc/cron.html

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