On Oct. 23, 1983, Marine Cpl. Thurnell “Chip” Shields lay on his cot on the third floor of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines battalion landing team headquarters in Beirut when he was awakened by the sound of gunfire.
A suicide truck bomb was barreling toward the building. A Marine guard had opened fire with his M-16 as a sergeant on the ground floor instantly recognized the threat and engaged the truck with his .45 caliber pistol, Shields recalled.
The sergeant yelled for Marines in the building to get out. Shields managed to get up and put his helmet on. The next thing he remembers is an intense white flash. He spent the next three hours trapped in the rubble of the building before he was rescued.
The explosion killed 241 U.S. service members: 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. It was the bloodiest single day for the Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. A second attack minutes later killed 58 French troops.
On Tuesday, more than 40 years after the attack, an Israeli airstrike killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah leader whom the Justice Department says “played a central role” in the Beirut bombing..
Better late than never
Shukr’s death offers “another small brick of closure” for the Marines who survived the 1983 attack and the families who lost loved ones, Shields told Task & Purpose.
“Yes, it is 40 years later,” Shields told Task & Purpose, “But when you go after the folks that framed this whole thing to kill Marines, kill French, and any kind of multinational task force members, any time is not too late to get them. I’m glad he’s been taken down, even though he wasn’t taken down by us. I’m just glad he’s gone. One more.”
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Shields expects Beirut Marines to discuss Shukr’s death at their annual reunion in October. He added that Shkur has been responsible for numerous other terrorist attacks over the past 40 years.
Shukr was targeted by the Israelis in response to a July 27 missile attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights that killed 12 children. Israel has blamed the attack on Hezbollah, which has denied being responsible for it.
For the Marines who deployed to Beirut, it remains unclear exactly who was involved in planning the 1983 attack, Shields said.
“We were there on a peaceful mission,” Shields said. “We weren’t there to be the baddies. They chose to try to have us leave by making us the baddies.”
‘Live by the sword…’
Other Beirut Marines told Task & Purpose they were also gratified that Shukr had been removed from the battlefield.
Retired Marine Chief Warrant Officer 4 Randy Gaddo said he believes justice was served by the deaths of Shukr and Mughniyah.
Both men played key roles in planning the Oct. 23 attacks as well as the April 18, 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, which were “the preliminary shots fired” in the ongoing war on terrorism, said Gaddo, a former president of Beirut Veterans of America and founding vice president of the group.
“They lived by the sword, and they died by the sword,” Gaddo told Task & Purpose. “They had much blood on their hands from these and other atrocious terror attacks that killed many innocents.”
He is also glad that the West is continuing to hunt down terrorists after so many decades.
“It makes me feel like we’re still at it,” said Gaddo, who was a staff sergeant at the time of the Beirut attack. “We haven’t given it up. A lot of people think, oh, the war on terror is over; but it’s not – and maybe never will be. The problem is when one of them passes away, dies – whether it’s natural causes or not – there’s somebody else who’s going to step up and take their place. They’re always training people. It’s not a thing that is just going to go away.”
Scene of destruction
Tim McCoskey, who was a lance corporal in October 1983, described Shukr as “one evil sonofabitch” and lamented the fact that Shukr had stayed alive for so many years after the deaths of his fellow Marines at Beirut.
“He just got to live too much of a life that these guys didn’t,” McCoskey told Task & Purpose. “It’s just a good thing that he’s off this earth.”
McCoskey described the scene following the Beirut attack as “what you see pictured in Gaza right now.” He spent several days after the bombing taking part in rescue and recovery efforts. Immediately after the blast, he began putting survivors on jeeps so they could be taken elsewhere for medical treatment. He also helped pull a Navy chaplain who was buried in the rubble.
As the chance of finding any more survivors diminished over time, McCoskey and other Marines focused on recovering the remains of fallen service members. He was able to identify one of the Marines killed by a tattoo on his arm.
“That was a lot to comprehend at the time; like, how in the hell did all this happen?” McCoskey said.
‘Our first duty is to remember’
The truck bomb that struck the 1/8 battalion landing team headquarters contained 12,000 pounds of explosives. FBI investigators later said it was the largest non-nuclear blast they had ever seen.
When Shields came to, he could hear people below him calling for help. He was pinned by rubble and could only move his right arm.
“I made my peace with God, right then, said my prayers, said, ‘Lord, if it’s my time, I’m ready,’” Shields recalled. “So, I just relaxed at that point.”
He passed out and when he woke up again, it was quiet. Later, he heard footsteps from above and he managed to shout until a Marine in his platoon found him. Shields told his rescuer to look for his roommate.
“I said I can hold for as long as you need; just try to get him out,” Shields said. “But it was too late. He said, ‘There’s nothing I can do for him.’”
Shields was eventually medically evacuated. He recovered from his wounds and served in Operations Desert Shield and Storm. He spent 12 years on active duty and then became a reservist, retiring as a gunnery sergeant.
All these years later, some Beirut Marines are still unable to go to the Beirut Barracks Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, which bears the names of 273 U.S. service members who were killed in the attack, died of their injuries afterward, and were killed in the 1983 Grenada operation, he said.
When Task & Purpose asked Shields on Wednesday to reflect on the 1983 attack, he had one overriding thought: “Our first duty is to remember; and so along with that is to tell their stories, tell what happened. The story didn’t begin when we were hit by the terrorist bomb that killed 241 that day, along with the French. The story is that each of them were proud of what they were doing as a multinational peacekeeping force. We were proud to be doing the duties that saved lives.”