LYNN — Charles Griffin can remember Nov. 8, 1983, with a precision not dimmed by time and recall how he handed a folded American flag to the Lynn mother of Bradley J. Campus, one of 241 Marines killed in an attack three weeks earlier on a Beirut, Lebanon building where they were based.
For Marine veteran Griffin and other Marines, including former Revere Police Chief Joseph Cafarelli, Oct. 23 is a day for remembrance and a reminder of the risks Americans face around the world.
“In my opinion, the attack that day was the first battle in the global war on terrorism. We were a peace-keeping force and we were attacked,” Cafarelli said.
Campus was a 21-year-old English High School graduate who joined the Marine Corps to inject some direction into his life. By mid-1983, warring factions had reduced once-glamorous Beirut to a city filled with rubble, gunfire and checkpoints manned by the factions’ soldiers.
Campus and members of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit were assigned, in the words of an August 1983 news report, “to create an aura of calm and stability so that the Lebanese government can re-establish control …”
They were based in a building near the Beirut airport designated as a headquarters for the Marines.
Campus’ sister Brenda in an Item interview six weeks before his death expressed worries about her brother in the wake of the deaths of five Marines in Lebanon in late August, early September 1983. The attacker who killed Campus and fellow Marines was at the wheel of an explosive-laden truck that plowed into the headquarters building while many of the Marines slept.
Lynn resident Darryl Bradley Sr. was based in the building with his Marine unit from February to May 1983. Stationed in North Carolina on the day of the attack, Bradley and other Marines were rushed onto military aircraft and dispatched to Lebanon to bolster the Marine security presence in the bombing’s aftermath.
“That was a massive, four-story concrete building. We couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Cafarelli and fellow Marines were sent to Lebanon days later. The sight of the bombed building with its floors flattened one on top of the other is still crystal clear in his mind.
“It was an eye-opener for a 20-year-old kid from Revere. The world became a very serious place for us very quickly,” he said.
Griffin, a career Lynn police officer who was in the Marine Corps from 1977 to 1985, knew Campus through his wife, Cathy, who was a friend of one of Campus’ sisters. Griffin received the honor of escorting Campus’ body during the Nov. 8 funeral and burial.
Like other Beirut veterans, he is proud of the sign honoring Campus at the Clark Street Playground and of the Boston memorial honoring Campus and eight other Massachusetts residents killed in the attack.
Bradley escorted Clare Campus to the Boston memorial on one of the anniversary remembrances of the attack and said he keeps in close touch with Cafarelli and others who served in Beirut.
“Our brothers are never forgotten,” Bradley said.
