Beirut bombing victims remembered

Twenty-six years after a bombing in Lebanon stunned Jacksonville, Camp Lejeune and surrounding communities, veterans and their families still remember with sadness but are forging healing bonds.

On Friday morning, the city and Camp Lejeune marked the anniversary of the 1983 suicide bombing that took the lives of 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers, most of whom were from the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, based at Jacksonville’s Camp Geiger. The service at the Beirut Memorial drew hundreds to the granite wall carrying a simple, eloquent inscription: “They Came in Peace.”

Jacksonville Mayor Sammy Phillips recalled the grief stricken moments the community shared after hearing news of the bombings. But he also spoke of how they united to endure the coming days.

“Jacksonville has never been the same since Beirut,” he said. “No single event has brought the military and civilian leaders so close together.”

Col. Richard Flatau Jr., commanding officer of Camp Lejeune, laid a wreath at the site of the memorial and gave a brief address. He commended the community on helping each other in shared sorrow and how they work to keep alive the memory of those who died.

Maj. Gen. Paul Lefebvre, deputy commanding general of the II Marine Expeditionary Force, said the day was very personal to him as then-commanding officer of Third Battalion, Eighth Marines.

“Eighth Marines is my home,” he said.

Lefebvre described the tragic events of Oct. 23, 1983, reminding all that those who were killed were on a peacekeeping mission. Although the history of the Beirut bombing is not well-known on the national level, Lefebvre noted its global impact, calling the attack “the beginning of what is now called the war on terror.”

The day began a life journey for another in the audience. Edward Northup Gadsby III was a resident of Midway Park, N.J., when he heard news of the Beirut attack. The next day, he reported to his local recruiting office to enlist in the Marines, requesting a position as a machine gunner. When he left the Marines, he remained in Jacksonville, raising his family here.

Each year, he said, he takes his family to the memorial service to remember, a way of ensuring “that all of our children have a working understanding of the unbelievable sacrifices made by our service men and women.”

Two and a half decades later, many who found strength in each other during the wake of tragedy remain close. Tom Rutter, who was a Marine with 1/8 in Beirut at the time of the bombing, traveled from Essex, Md., for the service, as he has for six years.

“I was about half a mile away when it happened,” he said. A member of the scout sniper platoon, he remembers spending half a day on site, “helping with recovering the bodies, identifying casualties.”

Though Rutter found it difficult to come to the memorial event for many years because of the memories, he now keeps in touch with several veterans by e-mail.

“We’re all brothers,” he said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.”

Near the close of the ceremony, Eric Horner, a Nashville-based Christian musician whose wife, Debby, is one of the widows of Beirut, performed a song he had written for last year’s 25th anniversary service.

“They were brothers, they were soldiers, they were sailors and Marines,” he sang. “They came in peace; now they walk on peaceful shores.”