BY CLAUDE SALHANI JACKSONVILLE, N.C., Oct. 23 (UPI) U.S. Marine Corps veterans gathered to say a prayer and to remember the 241 servicemen who perished in the world's largest non-nuclear explosion in Beirut fifteen years ago. The names of the 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers engraved on what they call here "the other wall" were read by two Beirut veterans during a pre-dawn ceremony, as relatives and friends gathered on this cold, windy morning. The last name was called off at 6:20 a.m., the time when the bomb exploded, forever changing the lives of those gathered in this quiet southern town. "They came in peace," said Gen. Charles C. Krulak, Commandant of the Marine Corps, during a morning ceremony at Camp Lejeune, in Jacksonville, NC. Krulak added that the situation in Lebanon had confounded the Marines. Families and friends of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Lebanon attended an "anniversary of remembrance" to honor the servicemen who died when a suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden truck into a building near Beirut's International Airport that housed the Battalion Landing Team (BLT). Military experts who visited the site soon after the explosion called it the largest non-nuclear explosion in history. Approximately 12,000 pounds of high explosives and several canisters of flammable gas were used to make the bomb. The Marines lost more men on that one day than in any other battle since the Corps fought the Japanese on Iwo Jima during World War II. "We are determined not to let the memory fade away," said retired Marine Major Bob Jordan, President of the Beirut Veterans of America. Jordan served as Public Affairs officer in Beirut and was there at the time of the bombing. "If you forget history, you repeat your mistakes," added Jordan. "We don't want the deaths of (the slain servicemen) to have been in vain...and don't want the courage, dedication and sacrifice of hundreds and thousands to be minimized," he said. Amanda Winter was only three years old when her father, a captain in the Marine Corps was killed in Beirut. Now eighteen, Winter has made a pilgrimage to learn more about the dad she hardly knew, and to try to understand the circumstances behind his death. She has come to meet his fellow comrades-in-arms and to talk to anyone who might have known her father, Capt. William Winter. Winter, like hundreds of others, came to remember and, as Maj. Jordan concluded, "to honor the sacrifice of those who died." Among those who participated in the service were two chaplains who served in Beirut. One, Chaplain Danny Wheeler, was buried alive in the rubble for five days until rescuers managed to dig him out. "I still think we could have brought peace to Lebanon much earlier if our political leaders had the fortitude of the young men they sent in harm's way in Lebanon," said Jordan, who contrasted the failure of the U.S. intervention with the success of 1958, when American troops were sent to Lebanon to stop an earlier civil war. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the 1958 intervention. The difference, according to several high-ranking American officers who were in Beirut at the time, was that in 1958, military leaders in Lebanon were allowed to call the shots that allowed for a successful operation. Twenty-five years later, when U.S., French, Italian and British troops participated in the Multinational Peacekeeping Force, all decisions were made by politicians in Washington. The Marines were told to "show the flag" and not dig-in. This went contrary to the very training of the Corps, who had no choice but to abide by Washington's call.