October 27, 2025 - (Photos Courtesy Larry Hume) - VFW Post 8904 gathered at the Shelby County Veterans Memorial on Thursday, October 23, 2025 to remember those who lost their lives 42 years ago in Beirut, Lebanon due to the bombing of a Marine compound.
Zachery McCormick, Post Life Member, led the program, sharing that early on a Sunday morning when around 06:21 hours, on October 23, 1983, two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut, Lebanon that housed American and French service members in a multi-national force in Lebanon.
They were performing peacekeeping operations during the Lebanese civil war. The attack killed 307 people, 241 of which were American military, 58 were French military, six were civilians plus the two attackers.
The first suicide bomb detonated a truck bomb at the building serving as a barracks for the 1st Battalion, Eighth Marines, Second Marine Division; killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three Army soldiers. This was the deadliest single day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II and the deadliest single day death toll for the U.S. Armed Forces since the first day of the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War.
Another 128 were wounded in the blast and 13 others later died of their injuries.
Minutes after the first bombing, a suicide bomber attacked a nine-story building where the French contingent was stationed, a few kilometers from the first.
In honor of those who died that day and the days that followed, a wreath was hung on the Shelby County Veterans Memorial by Dennis Menz, US Marine Corps veteran.
During the program, the following letter was shared,
Remembrance Of Jim Wulf (Brother Of The Late Mike Wulf) Life Member, Lives In Napoleon, Ohio.
On October 23rd 1983 I was a 2nd class petty officer in the us. Navy. We were on a normal western pacific cruise which lasts six months. Suddenly our mission changed and we were sent up the Suez Canal and I remember seeing the pyramids and how amazing that was.
We really didn’t know what we were heading into. We ended up sitting a mile offshore and we began flying supplies into the marine compound. They told us we were a part of the multinational peacekeeping force but it didn’t look like peace to me, the bombing was going on day and night and the us was not a part of it.
I remember one day when a commander whom I had never seen before came into my machine shop and told us that we needed to make ejections pins for an Israeli aircraft to drop British bombs. I informed him that I did not have clearance to make those changes. He informed me the 6th fleet admiral said I did, so we made probably 20 of them. I asked the commander how will I know if they worked and he said when you see the plane go by and it doesn’t come back then you will know it didn’t work, that was a gut check.
We sat there off the coast for about a month and a half when they blew up the marine compound. I was on the USS Tarawa a helicopter carrier along with 2000 marines on board. The American ships moved over the horizon and opened up on Beirut. We stayed a few more days and then we headed back to San Diego.
We didn’t know how bad it was until we got home. I will never forget what happened there and still have dreams about it.
