Saks High School - Saks Echoes Yearbook (Anniston, AL)

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1983, Year in Review Havoc in Beirut Grenada Invasion KAL Flight 007 Blue Pond Tragedy “ A xt the start all one had was images of airports: the airport in Beirut where the bodies of Marines lay stacked in aluminum coffins like salesmen's sample cases, and the airport in Grenada where Marines and Army Hangers swooped down for a surprise inva- sion 4 (From “Days of Shock,” Time, November 7, 1983, by Roger Rosenblatt). Through the year, one after the other, three ma- jor shocks began to unfold the bar- barity of the world in which we live, overshadowing most of the other events of 1983. The first shock came as tidal waves of devastating news hit America and its people hard, very hard: KAL flight 007 downed by Soviet SU-15 fighter in the Sea of Japan after leaving Anchorage, Alaska. The civilian airliner had been cold-bloodedly blasted out of the skies by a missile-firing Soviet interceptor, with an all but certain loss of 269 lives. One of those lives lost was that of Congressman Lawrence McDonald. He was part of an official six-man congressional delegation representing the United States at a conference in Seoul to commemorate the 30th anniver- sary of the mutual defense treaty between South Korea and the U.S. How ironic that McDonald, “the leading anti-communist in the American government,” had been on a plane that was “forced into Soviet territory” and shot down. According to Secretary of State Shultz, “The Soviet pilot reported that he fired a missile and the target was destroyed.” The second shock involved the Marine peace-keeping force which the United States has maintained in Beirut, Ivebanon, since the fall of 1982. Here the Mid-Fast riddle is far from being solved. The Marine's stay in Beirut hasn't been a pleasant one. In the spring of 1983 the United States Embassy in that city was bombed. Our Marines successfully “held down the fort” throughout the summer, only to be devastated by several horrible at- tacks. The first attack, in August, by Druze and Shiite militiamen left two U.S. Marines dead and four- teen wounded. The U.S. and French troops didn't take the at- tacks lightly and immediately began to fire back. In September our troops still “held the line” along with the U.S. destroyer John Rodgers, the nuclear powered cruiser Virginia, and the battleship President Reagan New Jersey• In October, on a rather peaceful Sunday morning, havoc struck. Only the cooks were up and about in the reinforced con- crete Aviation Safety Building on the edge of the Beirut Interna- tional Airport, used as a head- quarters by the Eighth Marine Bat- talion of the U.S., part of the peace-keeping force. As 200 men lay sleeping in their cots, suddenly a truck laden with dynamite, on a frantical suicide mission, crashed into the building's lobby and ex- ploded with such force that the structure collapsed in seconds, yielding the death of over 200 Marines. Those who survived have only nightmares for their memories. President Reagan has since announced that the Marines will be out of I ebanon by July of 1984. A third major shock came only two days after the death of at least 229 Marines in Beirut when Presi- dent Reagan ordered a vast inva- sion of Grenada. In Grenada, a small tropical-island-resort island in the Caribbean, a 24-hour curfew had been ordered by a group that had taken over the government, promising that violators would be shot on sight. The first concern of the President was the 1000 Americans on the island. He sent the carrier Independence, on route to I ebanon with 1,900