Beirut Marines not Forgotten Families Mark 10th Anniversary of Attack

Pears are in full bloom on approximately 270 Bradford trees that have grown to full size in the 10 years since they were planted at Camp LeJeune, N.C., in the memory of American servicemen killed in Lebanon and Grenada in the early 1980s.
The trees are the symbolic sentries on LeJeune Boulevard from the main gate to the memorial site for Saturday’s 10th-annual memorial service.
For visitors to the post near Jacksonville, N.C., where most of the men were stationed, the trees and the statue of the Marine guard facing “The Other Wall,” serve as a reminder that, as one Marine wrote in a letter home following the deaths of 241 American servicemen in an early-morning terrorist attack Oct. 23, 1983 in Beirut – “It’s so clear to me now, Mom. Freedom isn’t free.”
“To me, they’re brave, little trees,” said Peggy Stelpflug, the mother of Lance Cpl. Bill Stelpflug, one of the men who died at approximately 6:22 a.m. 10 years ago when a Mercedes truck loaded with explosives burst through the Battalion Landing Team Headquarters building that housed the 24th Marine Amphibious Unite. Ms. Stelpflug and husband Bill planted the same kind of trees in their own yard in Auburn.
“They always say it takes about seven years to really get over the loss of a child, at least to where you start to feel like your old self again and appreciate some of the pleasures they gave you,” she said. “I can smile now when I talk about my son. I smiled some earlier, but now I don’t feel that terrible feeling in my stomach and enjoy more the little things about him that gave me such pleasure.”
The families of Ms. Stelpflug and Celia Johnson of Dothan will be among those attending Saturday’s 10th anniversary memorial service at Camp LeJeune. Ms. Johnson, who lost her only son, Leonard Warren Walker, in the terrorist attack, tries to attend the service each year, but was unable to go in 1992 because of work obligations.
Visiting the post where her son was stationed obviously will bring some tears, but they will be tears worth crying.
“I’m really looking forward to renewing bonds with them,” she said. “I didn’t get to see him before he left to go (to Beirut), so just being in places he has been and meant a lot to him means a lot to me.”
The Beirut Memorial Project in Jacksonville was by far the most extensive memorial project honoring the Lebanon veterans. In addition to the Bradford pear trees that were planted in 1984, the community also built the memorial that has become known as “The Other Wall” because of its similarity to the wall honoring Vietnam veterans in Washington, D.C.
The wall, which has the names of the servicemen on one side and the words “They Came in Peace” on the other, is the site for the annual anniversary memorial service.
The statue of a lone Marine keeping vigil was added in 1986.
A similar service will be held in Arlington Cemetery in Washington. Since 1984, the No Greater Love organization has observed Oct. 23 as a day to remember all victims of terrorism.
The families, which formed a nationwide support group called “The Beirut Connection” that publishes a regular newsletter, have been trying to get a commemorative stamp for seven years. Ms. Stelpflug published a collection of poetry from Beirut victims’ families in 1987.
The book, titled “They Came in Peace,” included two poems written by her son. “The War King Calls” was recovered from the destroyed building and featured Stelpflug’s reflections of the war-torn city.
The deaths of Stelpflug, Johnson and their comrades, which followed the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April and other escalated violence, raised many questions in 1983.
The families still have those questions, but Saturday isn’t about that. It’s about remembering their fallen Marines, Soldiers and Sailors.
Only five members of Walker’s Second Reconnaissance Battalion Company C unit survived the attack, which was the largest loss of life for American servicemen since the Vietnam War and the highest Marine casualties since World War II. The families who lost their sons basically adopted the survivors as their own, although the men are in their early 30s now.
“We tell them they don’t have just one set of parents anymore,” Ms. Johnson said. “They have 25 sets of parents.”
The explosion blasted the worlds of families like Ms. Johnson, Ms. Stelpflug and four others in the state. Also killed were Terry Hudson of Prichard, Henry Townsend of Montgomery, Jimmy R. Cain of Gardendale, and James Price of Attalla.
The families draw strength from each other at the annual memorial service.
“It’s a great comfort, a solace,” Ms. Stelpflug said. “You don’t have to explain anything to them because they know. They’ve experienced it.”
During the summer of 1983, the Stelpflugs were campaigning for the return of the American troops in Lebanon and enlisted the assistance of their congressman, the late Bill Nichols. Nichols, like the Stelpflugs, could sense a tragedy in the making.
Ms. Stelpflug sees the same potential in Somalia.
“It was like being in a tall building looking down and seeing two cars come together,” she said. “I feel it is definitely the same pattern in Somalia.
“We’re in there for the best of reasons, there were really no vital interests, and we were trying to keep the peace. It doesn’t work. That’s one reason we want people to remember what happened in Beirut, so it doesn’t happen again.”
Walker attended elementary and middle schools in Dothan before he graduated from Jeb Stuart High School in Falls Church, Va., and joined the Marines in 1980. He had been in Dothan four months before his death and had a choice of returning to Camp LeJeune or rejoining the troops in Beirut.
“He was doing what he wanted to do,” Ms. Johnson said. “He was a Marine, and he had friendships there.”