Soldiers Killed in ’83 Beirut Blast Honored for Mideast Peace Role

Ten years to the minute after a terrorist bomb killed 241 U.S. servicemen in Beirut, relatives commemorated the deaths by dousing symbolic candle flames.

More than 1,500 people gathered Saturday at the Beirut Memorial in woods near Camp Lejeune. A gray marble wall bears the names of all who died in the 1983 blast.

“The light of the soldiers who died is still bright and clear and strong,” said Marine Commandant Gen. Carl E. Mundy Jr. “We all stand in it today. They gave peace to a tortured land . . . with the clearest of motives.”

Mundy spoke at the afternoon ceremony that included a 21-gun salute and an echo Taps.

Relatives of the victims held a morning candlelight service at the memorial. Carrying on a tradition that began on Oct. 23, 1984, the candles were blown out at 6:22 a.m., the minute that the barracks were bombed.

The attack came from a terrorist on a suicide mission who crashed through barriers and plowed his explosives-packed truck into the four-story barracks.

“Today, we honored those who died,” Ryan Clark Crocker, ambassador to Lebanon, told the crowd at the afternoon gathering. “It is a fitting season to honor all those who died before and after that day in Lebanon. I am happy to be here to give gratitude and respect from the foreign service to those who gave their lives there.”

Retired Gen. James Mead, who led the troops to Lebanon but left before the bombing, said in an interview that the victims did not die in vain.

“They went in with high hopes of helping the Lebanese people,” Mead said. “In the short term, it didn’t seem to amount to much, but now what we see with the Middle East peace agreement that peace is coming to millions and millions of people.”