I have seen enough dead for 10 lifetimes.
—PRIVATE DAVID MADARAS, LETTER TO HIS FAMILY
October 24, 1983
Work continued in Beirut as rescuers deconstructed the pile layer by layer, removing the remains of the fourth floor followed by the third, second, and finally the first. The dead continued to surface, each placed in body bags and shipped to Germany, where dentists and FBI agents used forensic science to identify the remains. On the third day, workers uncovered the remains of Bryan Earle, who had returned from his honeymoon the day before the bombing. His bride, Micheline, had rushed to the Marine compound, where she had kept a lonely and tearful vigil, interrupted only by visits to the local hospitals and morgues in search of news. “I had a bad feeling when I got there that he was dead,” Micheline said. “I kept hoping somehow he was alive. You don’t ever want to believe someone you love is dead.”
Work on the pile proved emotional and exhausting. Sergeant Kim McKinney toiled all week, helping to remove fifty-seven bodies. “Why I kept count, I have no idea,” McKinney later said. “Seven days of just slow torture, cutting out the concrete, cutting the steel, picking it up, removing the dead—seven days. It was just a never-ending nightmare.”
Others packed up personal papers and belongings salvaged from the wreckage for shipment to families back in America. Unidentifiable papers and clothes, particularly those stained with blood, were collected and burned.
Dr. Jim Ware, who had played a tremendous role in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist bombing, still had one vital task to accomplish. “I want to see John Hudson,” he repeatedly instructed the work crews. “I need to see him.”
Hudson and Ware, who had attended the same medical school in Georgia, had first met back in May, rooming together for three weeks on board the Austin en route to Beirut. The fastidious Ware had spent six months preparing for deployment, packing everything he might need, right down to the foot powder. Hudson, in contrast, showed up with a single sack.
“What do you have there?” Ware asked in disbelief.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Hudson replied. “I packed last night.”
The two had hit it off immediately, a bond that would only strengthen in the months ahead. “He had been my friend,” the dentist recalled, “my sidekick and my jokester.”
Crews fetched Ware several days after the bombing with the news that Hudson had been found. Unsure of what he would encounter, Ware made his way over to the pile, where Marines had freed Hudson from the rubble.
Would his friend be crushed?
Or his body torn in pieces?
“Where is he?” Ware asked as he approached.
“Right here,” one of the workers replied.
Ware looked down on the lifeless body of his friend and was relieved to find him intact and free of any blood. Hudson, who had been asleep in his rack, wore a T-shirt but no shoes or dog tags. His right hand covered his face, the palm facing upward. The building where he had sought shelter from rockets and artillery had come down on top of him, killing him instantly. Ware paid his respects. “I wanted that moment with him,” he said, “because he was a personal friend of mine.”
“That’s John,” he confirmed for the rescuers.
Hudson had long feared his life would end in Beirut, a dread he touched on in so many of his letters. He prayed often that he would survive so that he could return home to his wife and infant son, to practice medicine in Georgia and play his beloved Dixieland jazz. In the top corner of each letter, he kept a running tally of his days in Beirut versus how many he had left. In his final letter, penned three days before the bombing, he noted he had spent 164 days on the beach and had only 24 days left. “Hopefully our long separation is quickly coming to an end. I sure hope so!” Hudson wrote. “I love you more than you’ll ever know.”
Naval criminal investigators—joined later by FBI agents—combed through the wreckage while reporters continued to prowl the bomb site’s perimeter, interviewing those Marines willing to talk. Many focused on Lance Corporal Robert Calhoun, who had a dramatic story of being on the roof of the Battalion Landing Team headquarters when the attack occurred. Journalists encircled the twenty-one-year-old Texan, holding microphones up to his face as he recounted hearing the terrorist’s truck crash through the guard shack and then explode. “Everything started falling,” he remembered. “I was praying to God.” Calhoun came to rest atop the rubble, where he froze for about twenty seconds. When he came to his senses, he unburied his friend Joe Martucci, who was next to him. That’s when he heard the cacophony of voices.
“Help me!” people around him cried. “God, help me!”
The young Marine’s voice broke. “His words began to run together,” observed the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Zucchino, “so somebody from the Public Affairs Office pulled him away to let him collect himself. Later, some other reporters asked to talk to him, but the public affairs people said, no, he had been under too much strain already.”
Several wounded Marines in Germany likewise spoke with reporters, including Burnham Matthews. As he had done for General Kelley, he recounted his incredible story of being blown out of a third-floor window. “I remember objects flying past me,” Matthews said. “I landed flat on my feet and I turned and watched as the roof of the building hit the ground.”
Reporters asked if the Marines felt security had been adequate. Car bombs were a known threat, the men replied, but a suicide attack was beyond imagination. “It was a cheap shot,” said Lance Corporal Lovelle Moore of Illinois. “You gotta be sneaky to fight best.”
“You can’t fight car bombs with a rifle,” added Matthews.
A similar press event took place at the hospital in Naples, where other wounded Marines recuperated. Much like Calhoun, journalists zeroed in on twenty-year-old Lance Corporal Adam Webb of Ohio, who was atop the building and rode the rubble down. “I stayed on the roof until it hit the ground,” he said. “Then I wound up sitting upright in a jeep.”
Many of the young Marines still in Beirut struggled to process the tragedy. Few had time to reflect in the hours after the attack, but as the days passed and the size of the pile diminished, many had time to rest and contemplate. “Paranoia is high, so is stress and fear. Days have been long and tiresome, nights have been sleepless and terrible,” Brad Ulick wrote in his diary. “As of yet, I have not mourned for my dear dead friends. I have not had time to fully think of it, nor have I accepted it. My mind cannot fully comprehend such mass death + destruction. Yet, I felt it, smelled it, and saw it.” Some sought out Father Pucciarelli, asking for Bibles and rosary beads. Others peppered him with questions. “What is death?” some asked. “What is my friend doing now? Where are my buddies? Are they part of the next dimension?”
The attack left many other Marines grateful. “I just thank God I’m alive,” said Lance Corporal Mike Balcom of New York, who survived despite being buried under the rubble. “I am not ashamed to say that it scared the shit out of me,” Private David Madaras wrote to his parents. “We were always saying how those guys in that building had it made—the easy life, living in a building with all the comfort. Well, I’m glad I live in a ditch.”
“I cried a lot,” recalled Michael Petit. “It didn’t take much to cause my emotions to spill over: a photograph, a glimpse of a letter, part of a birthday card.”
Most were exhausted by the sight of mangled bodies as well as the stench of rot that hung over the pile. “I have seen enough death and destruction to last for a thousand lifetimes,” Grant McIntosh wrote. “It seems to me that the whole bloody world is going to Hell in a hand basket.” The naval investigator worked for three days, packing bodies and photographing the crime scene, before he returned to the Iwo Jima. A letter from his wife with a photo of his daughter triggered a meltdown. “I broke, all I could see was the families and children of the dead Marines,” McIntosh wrote. “Honey, I cried. I felt so much hate, anger, frustration and above all helplessness.”
Henry Linkkila, who was on guard duty the morning of the attack, had been evacuated to the Iwo Jima. The explosion blew out both of his eardrums and left his ears with a constant ring, so much so that he struggled just to sleep. “I’ve vowed,” the cook wrote his mother, “never to step foot in Beirut again.” Many others felt the same. It was time to go home. “Boy,” John Dalziel wrote his family, “the deck of that ship will feel like Heaven.”