'83 bombing weighs on Marines

NICOSIA, Cyprus — It was a quiet flight over — the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans weighed heavily on their minds.

For Maj. Chris Abrams of the U.S. Marines, who piloted the helicopter that swooped into Beirut on July 16 and brought out the first group of U.S. evacuees fleeing violence in Lebanon, it was an opportunity.

"There are very few opportunities — unique opportunities — that anybody wants," Abrams said Wednesday in a telephone interview from the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima. "And as Marines, we take pride in being able to help people."

Abrams, 36, of Dover Plains, Mass., landed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut nearly 23 years after a suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden truck into a building where many of the U.S. troops were billeted, killing 241 Americans.

The Marines were ordered into Beirut in August 1982 as part of a multinational force to ensure order as PLO chairman Yasser Arafat's guerrillas were evacuated from Lebanon after Israel invaded the country. They left after about two weeks once the evacuation was completed.

But little more than a week later, they were ordered back after Christian militiamen allied with Israel massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Beirut. The Marines, along with British, French and Italian troops, were expected to provide a modicum of order to help the fragile Lebanese government get on its feet.

But the U.S. force was soon seen as supporting the Christian side in Lebanon's civil war. Marines fought Shiite Muslim militiamen in slums around the U.S. base at Beirut airport.

Early on Oct. 23, 1983, the Marine barracks were attacked and a near-simultaneous suicide attack killed 58 at the French multinational force headquarters.

The attacks were blamed on allies of Hezbollah, the Shiite militia now battling Israel. The following February — after the Lebanese army split along sectarian lines — the Marines withdrew to U.S. Navy ships offshore and other multinational troops also left Lebanon.

There has been no U.S. military presence since.

"It was mentioned once" on the way to Beirut, said Marine Corp. Jessica Buckley, who was crew chief on the second helicopter behind the one piloted by Abrams. Otherwise, it was a quiet, somewhat tense flight over the Mediterranean from the island of Cyprus.

"We were all kind of nervous going in," she said.

The Marines have been flying in and out of Beirut about twice daily, carrying aid in and people out.

Some 35,000 people with foreign passports, including many with injuries, have been evacuated from Lebanon through Cyprus since fighting broke out between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas July 12. Most were from Europe, the United States and Canada.

So far, the United States has pulled out about 15,000 of its citizens, mostly by sea.