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.