One Deadly Morning In Beirut-NY Times article by Chuck Pfarrer

[Wetzelbill]

One Deadly Morning in Beirut
By CHUCK PFARRER

RAVERSE CITY, Mich. — With the allied occupation of Iraq dominating the news, few Americans are likely to remember that 20 years ago today the United States suffered its most humiliating military defeat since Pearl Harbor. Early in the morning of Oct. 23, 1983, a truck loaded with six tons of explosives smashed into the Marine headquarters at Beirut International Airport. Two hundred and forty-one Americans were killed. I helped dig their bodies out of the rubble.

I was then a 26-year-old Navy lieutenant, executive officer of a SEAL platoon assigned to the multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon. My platoon and 1,500 marines had been deployed to Lebanon, along with French Foreign Legionnaires and battalions of British and Italian soldiers, to provide stability in a country ravaged by civil war and a Syrian invasion. To the Arab world, however, the intervention was seen as a prop to the continued Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. This difference of perception would prove deadly.

It was by the smallest and most ignoble bit of luck that I was not killed. I was 500 yards away at a site called Green Beach, sound asleep in an underground bunker. The night before, I'd led my SEAL squad into the foothills above Beirut on a reconnaissance mission. As we withdrew, we came under artillery fire. We didn't get back to our position until nearly 5 a.m. In what was nearly a lethal bit of morale boosting, I came close to ordering my men into a truck, arming them with mess kits and making them eat Sunday breakfast up at the Marine headquarters. I knew that a hot meal would do my guys good. But then, lazily, I thought that a couple of hours of sleep would do them better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/opinion/23PFER.html