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    Air station hosts Beirut PME

    JACKSONVILLE, NC, UNITED STATES

    10.23.2014

    Story by Cpl. Mary Carmona 

    Marine Corps Installations East       

    JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - The four-story, steel-reinforced concrete building started out as their home away from home.

    Officially, it served as the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit Battalion Landing Team headquarters, but the Marines referred to it as the “California Hilton.”

    Oct. 23, 1983, a pile of rubble and mangled bodies was all that remained of the structure located in Beirut, Lebanon.

    “It became our tomb,” said retired Gunnery Sgt. Dan Joy, who was less than a mile away from the BLT when the bombing occurred.
    The morning of Oct. 23, Hezbollah terrorists drove a truck carrying approximately 2,500 pounds of explosives into the BLT, leveling the building and killing most of the service members inside.
    It was the biggest non-nuclear explosion the world had seen up to that time.

    Simultaneously, a suicide bomber drove a vehicle loaded down with TNT into a building with French paratroopers, killing 58 French troops.

    “We didn’t have any equipment at first so we were digging with our hands,” Joy told present-day Marines at a Beirut presentation held at the Marine Corps Air Station New River theater, Oct. 21. “Body parts were everywhere.”

    Marines and sailors combed through the debris, trying to find their comrades.

    The Battalion Aid Station had been destroyed, along with most of the medical supplies. The corpsmen still pressed on, furiously working to help the injured, Joy said.

    “The corpsman performed miracles that day,” he said.

    241 Marines and U.S. service personnel were killed in the attack.
    Today, Beirut Veterans ensure our nation doesn’t forget those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, living by the tenet “The first duty is to remember.”

    Joy fulfills this mission by sharing his story and the story of his fallen comrades with today’s generation of service members.
    “As time goes on, people tend to forget,” he told troops during the PME. “That’s why we are doing this today – so you can pass this on to your children and tell them what Beirut is all about.”

    Betty Schiefelbein, author of “A Lasting Legacy: The Story of Beirut Memorial,” and Ron Bower, a historian and member of the Beirut Memorial advisory board, also spoke at the event.

    Schiefelbein moved to Jacksonville, North Carolina in 1983 to teach. It was her first introduction to the military.

    She recalls returning home the day of the bombing and seeing her neighbor sitting on her deck, crying. Her husband was stationed in Beirut. “We had no idea if he was dead or alive,” Schiefelbein said.
    Just as she comforted her neighbor that day, the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and Jacksonville community came together to support their service members in a time of need.

    A committee was organized almost immediately after the bombing to create a memorial to honor the fallen, Bower said.

    The memorial was completed and dedicated on Oct. 23, 1986, and every year from then on a ceremony is held at the memorial to remember Beirut and honor those who never came home.

    Schiefelbein closed the PME with the words of Staff Sgt. John E. Oliver, a Beirut veteran.

    “Is closure the holy grail?” he wrote. “For those Marines, soldiers and sailors, they were my brothers-in-arms. They deserve more than closure.”

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 10.23.2014
    Date Posted: 11.25.2014 13:25
    Story ID: 148788
    Location: JACKSONVILLE, NC, US

    Web Views: 33
    Downloads: 0

    PUBLIC DOMAIN