November 7, 2024 - VFW Post 8904 held a remembrance program October 26, 2024, in honor of those who lost their lives during the Beirut, Lebanon bombing of 1983.
Richard Lundie, VFW Post 8904 Chaplain, opened the program and led with an opening prayer before the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag was recited.
Lundie stated that it was early on a Sunday morning when around 06:22 hours on October 23, 1983, when two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut, Lebanon that housed American and French service members in a multi-national force in Lebanon.
“They were a military peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. The action killed 307 people, 241 were Americans, 5[8] was French military, six were civilians and plus the two attackers,” said Lundie.
Lundie shared that 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. He said, 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 Vietnam.
“Another 128 Americans were wounded in the blast and 13 died of their injuries,” said Lundie.
Minutes after the first bombing, a second 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 Post Life Member Ray Carroll, US Navy, Vietnam Veteran, and Taps was then played as presented by Gene Hutto, Past Post Commander.
