The First Duty is to Remember.
FCC (SW) Robert Beller, USN, Ret.
October 22, 2013 at 11:02 PM
I originally wrote this on a blog I used to keep up about 7 years ago. I've expanded and edited it a little bit.



Thanks to Al Sandrik's article (Posted in my albums) a few things that time and the doors in my memory helped me forget have been remembered and corrected.





30 years ago  was my very first morning waking up on a Navy ship. I was on board the USS Iwo Jima, waiting for a flight to my ship, the USS New Jersey floating around off the coast of Lebanon.



We'd gotten to Iwo Jima on the night of October 22nd after flying from Sigonella, Sicily to Cypress, then via helicopter to the coast of Lebanon. The people who were going to other ships spent the night on the Iwo Jima in their medical overflow area, the Marines going ashore were flown in that night.

I didn't get to wake up to a bugle, or reveille, or some droll thing like that. Instead I was shaken out of a sound sleep, and asked what type blood I had, because they needed donations, there were a lot of casualties coming in.

My blood type wasn't necessary, so instead I was sent to the hangar deck, and told to put on a red flight deck jacket, and go up to the flight deck and  unload helo's. That was the first time someone had a chance to ask "What the hell's going on", and we were told the Marine barracks had been destroyed by some kind of bomb.



When we got to the hanger the ship's company had already unloaded the first group of helicopters, and the triage scene was like something out of M*A*S*H, times 100. There were already a fair number of stretchers laid out with the wounded on them. Up to that day if I saw a white porcelain basin I always thought of my grandmothers house. Now when I see them in an antique store they remind me of the blood and shrapnel in them on that hanger deck.

When the helo's started landing we were told which to go to, two at a time, and grab a stretcher. Believe me, this was not what I'd expected when I joined the Navy. I understood that the military meant you could see something like that; it was stories of the great battles of World War II that drove me to be a sailor. I just didn't think I'd see it quite that soon.

I don't know how many stretchers I carried, I only specifically remember one, that's because it was a SEAL I'd had a few beers with a couple of days earlier in Sicily, while we waited for our flights. My hands were only a foot away from his shattered legs, that just a day or two before had been running at least 5 miles every morning. I remember thinking later that day that I was relieved that either drugs, shock, or pain had him unconscious. I know I couldn't have handled hearing anything from him as I carried the litter to the elevator.



I don't know how many wounded the Iwo Jima took on board. I do know that medical overflow on the Iwo Jima held about 100 people, and it was pretty well full, as were the regular medical spaces.

Later that day I was asked if I wanted to go to "the beach" and help with the search. I couldn't do it. I'd seen more death, and maiming in the first 10 hours I was awake that day than I had in 18 previous years (or the 30 since), and the idea of going and looking for people in ruble just wasn't working. Instead, I spent the next two hours on the fantail of the ship, alternating between crying and throwing up.

For the next two nights I slept in a Marine berth, directly above the wounded Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers who now occupied the medical overflow area; listening to their pain, wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into. I knew from the little bit I was told before leaving the States that the ship was in Lebanon supporting a "peacekeeping" mission. This certainly didn't seem like keeping peace.

On 25 October I finally got a flight off of Iwo to my actual duty station, USS New Jersey. I will say I took great satisfaction in the fact that on December 14th we fired our 16" guns on some positions ashore. I think every one of us wanted a little bit of revenge for 10/23.



I was even happier in February 1984, when we fired 288 rounds on my watch. We completely depleted the stores for turret one that night, and had to give the duties to #2. Later, though, after you have time to absorb it, you realize someone else had to dig through ruble, and carry the wounded; I felt sorry for them.

241 were killed 10/23/1983, hundreds others injured, many families destroyed, I will never forget them, you shouldn't either.



Many years later, as I was getting ready to retire from the Navy, one of my shipmates asked me how I managed to do 20 years after seeing that on my first day on a ship. My answer to him was that I always knew that it would be almost impossible to have a day worse than that, so how hard could it be. I also know, later in life, that part of it was to honor those 241 who gave so much more than I did.

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10/23/08
I also wanted to note in here, that for many years I was kind of a PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) doubter. I thought that "hey, I'd been through some trauma, and I'm okay", so folks must be whining. Then one night in 2007, The Travel Channel replayed Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" episode filmed in Beirut on 12 July 2006. For those who've forgotten, a new war started there on that day.

Seeing the images of the same types of landing craft I watched there for months, the same type helicopters (we haven't upgraded many) and shells going off in the same skyline during the evacuation caused me to start shaking, crying, and finally to turn the TV off. I didn't sleep right for the next few nights, and still haven't watched the whole episode. Some day. (That day hasn't come yet, 10/22/13).