History for the day: 1983: Marine barracks in Lebanon blown up

War Tales has this for 24 June:

It was 33 years ago that 241 Marines were killed when a terrorist truck bomb went off next to their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon as they were trying to keep the peace between Israel and Lebanon.

Lance Corporal Marty Remillard of Englewood, Florida was serving aboard the carrier USS Eisenhower as it sailed the Mediterranean, showing the flag, at the time of the incident. “On 20 October 1983, we left Beirut and headed for Italy and a little R&R. It would also give our ship time to resupply and refuel,” he explained. “We found out an hour after it happened that all the Marines had been killed in Beirut,” he said. “All our leaves were canceled and we headed back to Beirut.”

Shortly before 0630 on 23 October, a Mercedes truck went through a check point without stopping and continued on, circling the airport parking lot twice, gathering speed, as it turned toward the headquarters building.

Marine sentries were not allowed to have bullets in the chambers of their rifles or machine-guns. According to experts, even if they had been locked and loaded when the Mercedes bore down on the command post, there wouldn’t have been much they could have done to prevent it from penetrating the defensive perimeter.

After breaking through several barricades, it scooted between two Marine sentry boxes, smashed through some more barricades, and came to a stop after breaking into the headquarters building’s ground floor. Then the driver blew himself up, along with 231 Marines, sailors, and soldiers, most of whom were still asleep in their bunks. The bulk of them died in the collapse of their barracks around them.

Rico says we should have let the Israelis handle that situation...