Description The April 18, 1983, United States embassy bombing was a suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans. The victims were mostly embassy and CIA staff members, but also included several U.S. soldiers and one U.S. Marine Security Guard. It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission up to that time, and is considered the beginning of Islamist attacks on U.S. targets.
The attack came in the wake of an intervention in the Lebanese Civil War by the U.S. and other Western countries, which sought to restore order and central government authority.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
April / 1983
To Month/Year
April / 1983
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
People You Remember Capt. Glenn Cunningham GySgt. Jim Reifinger Cpl. Danny Wilson Cpl. Chuck Villani PFC Anthony "Fish" Biondo Cpl. Kevin Horan
Memories 18 April 1983, the Embassy in Beirut. I was the battalion radio operator attached to FOX Company. I had been in France on my R&R and we were flying back into Beirut. We were on our final approach when suddenly this huge cloud rose up over the port area, we had a birds eye view to the explosion, we knew somebody just got hammered, we just didn't know who?
Once on the ground we ran across the tarmac to our Company position along the runway. There were several deuce and a half's and the company was mounting out. The CO, Capt. Cunningham saw me and told me to drop my sea bag at my tent, draw some ammo and a radio and get on the lead truck with him ASAP. I never moved so fast in my life, grabbing the radio and loaded magazines from Tinsley (Arty FO's operator) we piled on board the trucks and took off! Once we left the vicinity of the Beirut International Airport we proceeded north up the coastal highway toward the port area of Beirut itself. We were ordered to face outboard to "Repel Boarders" if need be. I had never been north of the "Purple Heart Trail", our name for the road between CP113 and CP68 where the Weapons Company patrol had been ambushed. The people here in what was the Italian sector all seemed to be hostile to us and made no effort to remove themselves from our path with any sense of urgency, the tension was pretty thick and we all waited for an RPG or a burst of automatic fire which fortunately never came!
From the chatter on my radio I learned that it was our Embassy that had been hit, I don't remember if we knew this while boarding the trucks but I suppose we knew it had to be. As we rounded the Corniche and started east toward the port area we could see smoke and dust settling close by the waterfront, having seen the explosion from the air, I knew it was going to be bad! When we got there we encountered a thin line of French paratroopers and some Lebanese militiamen who had been first on the scene. The front of the building had been sheared off. The floors were all collapsed and looked like overlapping plates, between about the fifth and sixth floors the upper torso of a man was visible and he was still alive, the lower half of his body sandwiched between the floors, he died about an hour after our arrival.
We immediately set up a security perimeter around the area, chasing out all but the Red Crescent and rescue workers and manhandling the burned out hulks of several vehicles out of the way. I saw for the first time how fragile the human body is when I encountered body parts and corpses horribly mangled or burned.I had seen bodies before but not like this and I fought the urge to be sick for a while before busying myself with the job at hand! The Captain and I were in constant motion around the new perimeter, he wanted to insure that the area was safe for recovery and rescue operations and that we were in the right places to repel any follow on assault the bombers might attempt in order to add to the confusion.
Corporal Horan had the post right on the coastal highway to the east and was told to allow no one but ambulances or rescue vehicles to pass. When President Gemayel arrived with his motorcade Cpl. Horan stopped them and told them they had to turn around and he told them "No one can pass except rescue and medical personnel!" One of President Gemayel's aides said, "But this is the President of Lebanon!" and Cpl. Horan told him, "I don't care WHO the f*ck he is the President of, my orders say no one is coming through!" They turned around and left in huff!
While out on the line near Cpl. Horan I had a confrontation with a very insistent French or Belgian female photojournalist in red leather pants who insisted she had the right to pass, she kept telling me that "People have a right to see this", I told her that they didn't, at least not now and that she needed to go away. She kept saying something like "I thought YOU Americans were all for the freedom of the press?". I told her that there were people who had just been killed horribly behind me and that they did not deserve to have parasites like her stealing their remaining dignity with her f*cking camera, after what seemed an eternity of her bleating and badgering she finally stormed off and I had an immense feeling of satisfaction in sending her on her way!
We provided security and assisted in recovery in any way we could. At one point an embassy employee in a crumpled and torn suit came up with a bandaged Marine Security guard and asked the CO if he had any people with security clearances? He explained that there were classified materials that were all over the site and asked that we collect what we could and safeguard it until he could reclaim it. As a radio operator with a Secret Clearance I was tasked with assisting in the recovery of classified materials, I went around to the various posts and instructed them to hand over to me or the other comm guys anything that they might come across and began to scour the area for materials myself.
Our company continued to provide security throughout the cleanup and recovery operation, rotating back to our positions on the airport perimeter every couple of days. We knew the tenor of our mission had been changed. The remaining weeks in Lebanon were more like a siege than "Peacekeeping" as the Shiite Amal militia began to harass us more actively, especially at night. We didn't sleep much in the week or two following the bombing as our commitment to providing Embassy security had left us a bit shorthanded to maintain our section of the perimeter guard, continue patrolling and beefing up our own positions to prepare for the future, which appeared to be slipping toward our outright involvement in the hostilities. Being there at this time has left indelible memories that I can see as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
