The Lebanese capital was hotter than usual, a lot hotter. 

It was a summer afternoon in 1983, and the Beirut sky was afire. U.S.  Marines scrambled for cover as 122 mm Katyusha rockets scorched the air above them. Supposedly the rockets were headed to the Lebanese Armed Forces positions, but some hit the Marines’ area at the Beirut International Airport.

The harassment by fire came from the Druzes – an offshoot Muslim sect – in the Shouf Mountains overlooking Beirut. The Druzes were sending a message to the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit, the U.S. contingent of the Multinational Peacekeeping Force.

It was not the first Druze rocket or artillery attack, and the 24th MAU commander, Col. Tim Geraghty, decided it was time for a little intercultural communication. The M198 155-mm Howitzers of Charlie Battery were loaded and the Druze rocket position computed. Two Howitzers roared as two rounds were sent soaring toward the Druze
position. Both rounds burst directly above their target, and two illumination flares floated down from those bursts.

The Marines’ message was clear. They had zeroed in on the Druze position, and more enemy rockets would mean answering to Marine artillery and the kind of rounds that explode. The attack ended.

Leathernecks in Lebanon that summer were being drawn into a Beirut situation that was growing violent due to several factors.

First, the numerous factions that called Lebanon home were embroiled in what they saw as a jousting for equal representation in a government formed some 40 years earlier, after France declared Lebanon independent. Political representation had been divvied up according to majority and minority populations. The largest population consisted of the Maronite Christians, followed by the Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Druzes and more. As the majority, the Maronites were given the presidency and the largest voice in the chamber of deputies, or parliament – 30 of the 96 chamber seats. The position of prime minister went to the Sunnis, along with 20 seats in the chamber. The Shiites filled 19 chamber seats, the Druzes only six.

By 1983, the population ratios in Lebanon had changed. The Shiites had become the majority and wanted majority rule. Other sects also wanted a realignment. The Maronites did not agree.

Add to that situation the aggressive Christian Phalange militia, Shiite Amal militia and Hezbollah, or Party of God. Then stir in the warring Syrians and Israelis. Trouble, indeed, was brewing.

The nucleus of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit was Battalion Landing Team 1/8 – the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines and support units – commanded by Lt. Col. Larry Gerlach. The MAU also had the 24th MAU Service Support Group (MSSG) and a reinforced Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 162, consisting of the squadron’s CH-46s plus Hueys and Cobras. It was not a unit sent in to kick ass and take names. They were peacekeepers. They were handed a so-called mission of presence. They were to carry out that mission with the French, Italians and British.

Geraghty’s 24th MAU was the third Marine amphibious unit to serve with the multinational force.  The peacekeepers of the first two MAUs in Beirut, in 1982 and the first part of 1983, could say their mission of presence really was working. Their presence certainly appeared to help stabilize the volatile situation – until mid-spring 1983.

On April 18, a van loaded with explosives drove into the driveway in the front courtyard of the American Embassy in Beirut and detonated, destroying the embassy building and killing 63.

When Geraghty brought his 24th MAU Marines ashore at the end of May to relieve the 22nd MAU, he was well aware Beirut was becoming ever more dangerous.

And when Druze rockets and artillery started coming in, his concerns only increased.
Geraghty had to interface with the Maronite-dominated government and the new Lebanese military without appearing to take sides. Yet, with some factions becoming restless and the Marines required to refrain from reacting with fire, the mission became a significant challenge.

“The rules of engagement were tolerable, but things deteriorated and changed very fast,”
Geraghty told me 20 years later. “This crowd was serious in their goal to drive us out.”

Determined to carry out peacekeeping duties and to keep his Marines focused, Geraghty sent his troops on daily mobile jeep patrols throughout Beirut and foot patrols through Hay-es-Salaam, a poor Shiite neighborhood adjacent to the Marines’ airport perimeter positions. The gyrenes affectionately called the downtrodden community “Hooterville.”

As the summer weather got hotter, so did the precarious situation in Beirut. The Marines continued to dodge incoming rockets and artillery, and they soon were ducking sporadic small-arms sniper fire.

An Israeli withdrawal from the Shouf Mountains and Beirut itself at the end of August created more chaos. Though the Marines and Israelis were never very sociable – cool and standoffish was more like it – the no-nonsense Israeli Defense Force did stabilize eastern Beirut and the Shouf. That ended with their Aug. 28 pullout, and the Marines almost immediately suffered their first killed in action.

The Marines received small-arms fire from Shiite Amal militiamen all that day. The
action escalated the next morning with a mortar attack. The mortar men walked 82 mm rounds into Alpha Company, finally scoring a lethal hit that killed the 1st Platoon
commander, 2nd Lt. George Losey, and the platoon sergeant, Staff Sgt. Alexander Ortega. The Marines’ peacekeeping mission suddenly turned deadly.

When incoming rounds continued after warning shots of illumination from Charlie Battery, Geraghty gave the command to load all six of the battery’s M198s with HE – high explosive. The artillerymen cut loose, sending the 155-mm rounds to the mortar position, destroying it.

The Israeli withdrawal and the increased aggressiveness of Amal and Druze fighters brought an end to Marine mobile and foot patrols. Battles between Muslim factions
and the Lebanese Armed Forces – whose ranks were filled by Christians and
Muslims – became frequent and furious, always spilling over into the 24th MAU airport area and always endangering the Lebanese Scientific University, where the Marines positioned one of their rifle companies. Throughout September and into October, peace was elusive.

“The situation had deteriorated more,” Geraghty recalled. “By October, we were down to one single route to the embassy. To get to the university, we could no longer walk in. We were being squeezed.”

Maj. Bob Jordan served as Geraghty’s public affairs officer. He contended that the colonel’s concerns were never heeded, that President Reagan was poorly advised, and that any suggestions from the field that the situation in Beirut was different than perceived in Washington were never allowed to go far up the chain of command.

“The local commander’s prerogatives were limited by the administration, the State
Department and by a complex higher command structure that was not flexible enough to respond to the fast-paced dynamics of the situation on the ground,” Jordan explained to me.

The colonel’s concerns went beyond rockets, artillery and sniper fire. “I determined
before and upon our arrival that terrorism was always our biggest threat,” Geraghty said during a telephone interview.

A terrorist car bomb almost took out the MAU commander Oct. 19, when he was returning from the embassy along that single remaining route. A white Mercedes exploded as Geraghty’s small convoy passed. The Marines suffered no serious injuries,
but Lance Cpl. Mike Toma wrote home to a friend – now his wife –that he hoped to never come that close to death again. Toma would come a lot closer.

Early Sunday morning, Oct. 23, 1983, Geraghty was already working in his office, about 100 yards north of the large concrete building housing Gerlach's headquarters offices and troop sleeping quarters.

Geraghty usually awoke about 5 a.m. to go over what had happened the previous night.

Jordan was asleep on his cot not far from Geraghty's office. He was sleeping in, for he planned to help the French Foreign Legion troops celebrate the Legion’s birthday later that day. He would skip his usual 6 a.m. breakfast at Gerlach's battalion landing team headquarters, or the BLT building.

Another 100 yards north, at the MSSG, Cpl. John Wayne Nash was lying on his cot, talking to Cpl. Bertrand Hill about going to chow at the BLT. They decided against it.

Toma was still sound asleep in the first-floor sleeping quarters of the BLT shortly past
6 a.m. He was bunked with his TOW anti-tank missile Marines, less than 100 feet from the building's lobby.

At 6:22 a.m., a large, yellow Mercedes truck barreled into that lobby. TOW squad leader Sgt. Steve Russell tried to sound a warning, but it was too late. The truck’s Hezbollah driver was smiling as he detonated the gas-charged 12,000 pounds of TNT.

Even in a separate concrete building 100 yards away, Geraghty and his executive officer were lucky to escape injury. “It blew out all the windows, blew us ass over teacup, blew off the door on the opposite wall,” Geraghty recalled. “I thought a rocket had hit the building.”

For the Marines in the BLT building – the “Beirut Hilton,” they liked to call it – the blast was devastating. It was a massacre.

Miraculously, Toma was still alive only 100 feet from the hellacious explosion. He was
unable to move, but he was under a small portion of the second floor that did not collapse onto the first. He lapsed in and out of consciousness.

“I don’t remember the blast, but I remember waking up. I remember seeing rays of sun through a lot of dust,” Toma recounted to me two decades after the explosion.

Dust, in fact, thickly enveloped the area all around the BLT building – or where the four-story building previously stood.

Navy Senior Chief Joe Ciokon and his Navy broadcasting team – after the
explosion blew them like rag dolls from their cots in a nearby building – ran toward
the BLT barracks and offices.

“The first thing I remember seeing was a weird, fog-like dust. We all froze in our tracks and couldn’t believe what we saw,” said Ciokon, who is now retired from the Navy after 37 years of active duty.

From that eerie, dusty fog emerged torn, bloodied Marines, who looked not unlike haggard ghosts, Ciokon told me. He immediately led the first group to the aid
station at the Service Support Group.

From the MSSG, Nash and Hill ran to the BLT and into the smoke and dust to help the wounded, assisting many to the aid station. "Within no time, the clinic was full of injured Marines and sailors. Many of them did not make it at all to the MSSG and died along the way," Nash recounted. "The injuries were unbelievable. Each time I assisted one of them, I was covered with their blood. This was without a doubt a vision that will live with me forever."

Marines swarmed to the blast site to frantically dig for their brothers buried in the rubbled hell that had been the BLT headquarters and barracks.

Geraghty remembered gazing with a heavy heart upon the devastation and casualties. Jordan was in the middle of it, leading the first recovery efforts. Geraghty asked what he was doing, and Jordan explained he was organizing the search-and-rescue – and recovery.  Geraghty quietly said, “I have a lot of officers who can do that. I need you to handle the media.”

The media, of course, were standing by to get the story on the bloodiest day for the Marines since Iwo Jima in World War II.

The rescuers by then had gotten to Mike Toma. With a broken hip, collapsed lung and a lost eardrum, Toma could barely hear or talk, but he saw something remarkable as he was dragged from the rubble.

“I saw a beautiful blue sky and realized I shouldn’t have been able to see it, because the building would have blocked it,” Toma explained to me. “It was incomprehensible, but the building was gone.”

Then Toma was gone, relocated by helicopter to a ship offshore and then to a hospital in Germany.  He was one of only three TOW Marines to survive the bombing.  Tragically, the total death toll reached 241, including 17 sailors and four Army soldiers.

As Toma was flown to the USS Iwo Jima, Cpl. Matt Collins was wrapping up his duties in the Grenada operation with BLT 2/8 far away in the Caribbean. Collins and Toma had served together as BLT 2/8 Dragon anti-tank missile Marines in Beirut in 1982. On Oct. 25, 1983, Collins headed to Beirut with the 22nd MAU Leathernecks, ordered to relieve Geraghty’s 24th MAU.

The 22nd reached Lebanon on Nov. 18, and Collins came ashore to a Beirut as destabilized and dangerous as ever. Peacekeeping became a thing of the past. The Marines earned their combat pay.  Firefights with factions attacking from Hooterville were routine.

“Sometimes, we’d throw everything we had at them,” Collins told me. “In one firefight, Sgt. Kenneth Goss fired so many LAAWs (light antitank assault weapons), they were
piled up to his knees.”

The violence finally ended on Jan. 31, 1984, when Collins was with the last Marine to die in Beirut. He was standing just a few feet away from Lance Cpl. George Dramis when Dramis took an assault rifle round in the chest.

“He was gone before I got him out of there,” Collins remembered.  Finally, on Feb. 8, the Marines were ordered to withdraw to their ships. The mission of presence was over. More than 270 Americans had died.

As for the Oct. 23 bombing of BLT 1/8, Tim Geraghty caught the heat. However, Marines who were there won’t hear of it, and 30 years later, they still stand behind him.

Evidence indicates that the Oct. 23 bombing was backed by Syria and Iran, and many Beirut veterans regard it as the first enemy blow in the global war on terror that is still being waged today.

For Geraghty, one thing is certain: “The gates of hell opened up in Lebanon in the ’80s.”

Duck dinners are everything they're quacked up to be and more.

Depending upon where you live in the United States, it is now or soon will be duck season – time to call ducks, shoot them, dress them, cook them and eat them.

My duck days began when I was big enough to shoot my grandfather's Remington
12-gauge shotgun without the recoil knocking me on my butt. I was about 11, I guess. While I tried to hone my shooting skills with that Remington, my grandpa used his newer and better Browning 12-gauge duck 'n' goose buster. He shot most of the ducks we bagged, but I couldn't blame my shotgun. Instead, I pointed to Grandpa's decades of experience as my excuse.

I quickly did master the most important aspect of duck hunting – calling in the ducks. Grandpa taught me well, and I was a good duck-call student.

"You sure can talk to them ducks, boy," my grandfather would say to me often during those cool, crisp, autumn mornings in the duck blind, after calling in a flight of mallards.

But the best part of duck hunting was and still is eating those divinely delicious birds. I can think of nothing better in life than dining on ducks. Well, almost nothing.

My grandmother cooked those savory first ducks of my early years. I have tasted no better roasted ducks since then. Keep in mind, however, that I have never eaten a duck I did not devour with absolute, utter joy.

I have gobbled down quackers – both wild and domestic – in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, North Carolina, Louisiana, California, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan and France. I've enjoyed pan-browned duck breasts, smoked duck halves, duck in raspberry sauce, but I'm very happy with simple, traditional, whole, roasted ducks.

Grandma Ellen always prepared our birds whole, in what I assume was the
Irish-American way, learned from her mother. Then again, maybe it was the
German-American way, taught by her mother-in-law. Why didn't I ask about such
things when I was young? That kind of stuff is important family history that's now lost. Yep, when I was young, I failed in chemistry, second-year Latin and family history.

The French – as you would expect – can plate up some delicious duck dinners. But
I'm pretty fond of the Chinese variations, too. Singer Billie Holiday was of the same opinion.  

"Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck," the legendary Ms. Holiday said.

Peking duck might be the most famous Chinese version. It can be a pain in the tail to make, and time consuming, but the finished product is fantastic eating. When it's done, you wrap pieces or slices of the duck meat and duck skin in little Mandarin pancakes, with green onions and hoisin-based sauce. It's only natural that oohs, ahhs an umms will accompany the consumption of this stuff, so don't be alarmed.

You can find Peking duck recipes online, of course, and there's a pretty good one by Queen Dragon Mom on Food.com. It would be a good choice, because the instructions are clear and explicit, and the recipe is very similar to the one I ripped off from one of my Chinese cookbooks. You'll see right away that the recipe takes 8 hours to make, and 6 hours of that are prep time. That's why it can seem like a pain in the tail. But a lot of the
time involves the duck dangling in the air in order to dry, which helps your duck end up with crispy skin.

People driving by our Lake Arrowhead, Calif., house when I was preparing Peking duck probably wondered why a naked duck was hanging in the bay window of our dining nook, just off the kitchen. If they only knew. Oh, yes, if they knew what that buzzard-looking thing would turn into in a few more hours, those folks would be knocking on the door, begging for some fowl-filled Mandarin pancakes, right?

Although I've also cooked Chinese braised duck, French duck a l'orange and Vietnamese barbecued cinnamon duck, among other variations, I mostly prepare Ellen-style roasted duck. It always comes out brown, crispy, juicy and bursting with wonderful flavor. 

Remember, you don't have to be a duck hunter to love duck meat. A domestic bird, with that layer of fat, is delicious. Yes, indeed, that fabulous fat will baste and flavor the meat, so head for the market and purchase one of those plump Long Island birds. If you've never tried roasting a duck, go online and check out Martha Stewart's "Roast Duck 101."

While you do that, I have to go pick up some Winchester, 12-gauge, high-brass No. 4's.
Happy roasting!

One of our neighbors was out this morning with his monster leaf blower, poisoning our air with ozone and blasting our ears with crazy decibel levels for almost an hour.

You're right if you're thinking I'm not a fan of leaf blowers. God invented muscles and brooms to move leaves. And the Creator most likely frowns upon all those leaf-blower folks fouling up Earth's oxygen supply with ozone.

So as not to indict the neighbors on either side of me, I'll point out that this morning's leaf-blower dude lives elsewhere along our street. If you find the guy with the biggest and loudest blower, that's the guy. He has to strap the motor part of the blower onto his back, like a large pack. He looks like a big Marine with a flamethrower on Iwo Jima. And the noise? The thing sounds like a quad-engine, turboprop, C-130 combat cargo plane.

Another neighbor – he, too, doesn't live on either side of me – cannot understand my concern over the leaf blowers or over people who burn their piles of leaves and yard trimmings here in my Illinois hometown near St. Louis, Mo. He points to all the wildfires out West and verbalizes something like: So, what difference does it make? The air's fouled up anyway.

Sure, what's the big deal about ozone? Webster's defines ozone as "a poisonous, blue, unstable gaseous form of oxygen." Egad. Gag me with some ozone. That's the big deal.

The American Lung Association gives our St. Clair County – and all of the greater
St. Louis area – a grade of D for its ozone levels. The ALA ranks St. Louis number 25 among the worst U.S. cities for ozone and number 12 for worst year-round particle pollution. Number one worst in the nation for ozone is Los Angeles, which rates a grade of F from ALA. 

I know all about the ozone created in the Los Angeles basin and beyond. I've lived in the Los Angeles harbor community of San Pedro twice, totaling six years, and my wife and I have owned a home in the San Bernardino Mountains near Los Angeles for more than a quarter-century. Our home is in the mountain-resort community of Lake Arrowhead, where some residents' vehicles have license-plate frames with this slogan: "Come up for air."

That slogan is a little misleading. Dr. John Morgan, a professor of epidemiology at
Loma Linda University­, told me that ozone levels around the Los Angeles basin are higher at the higher elevations.

Apparently, tons of cruddy air gather in the Los Angeles basin where 5 percent of the nation's population is packed into just 13,000 square miles. The refineries and factories and more than 5 million vehicles create photochemical smog that is trapped in the basin, and the only way it can move out of the basin is up and over the mountains. Thus, at 5,400 feet in elevation, on the side of the mountains, our home is surrounded by as much or more ozone as those houses down in the city. Cough! Gag! Spit!

In Southern California, we create much of the ozone ourselves. A society of automobile commuters, we drive about the freeways and byways, our vehicles spewing out hydrocarbon exhaust, which combines with the sun's ultraviolet light and becomes photochemical smog.

Unleaded gasoline, catalytic converters and other equipment have improved vehicle emissions. And restrictions and converters have improved the quality of emissions from Los Angeles area industry. Southland air quality actually has improved in recent years, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, but our hazy, smoggy air is still poisoning us.

If you live in such places as Ames, Iowa, or Bellingham, Wash., or Bend, Ore., you can breathe easy. The American Lung Association rates your cities as the top three cleanest cities in the U.S. for ozone. And the three cleanest towns in the category of year-round particle pollution are Cheyenne, Wyo.; St. George, Utah; and Santa Fe, N.M.

Back to the St. Louis area, where I am located right now, it's autumn, and the smell of burning leaves will fill the air soon, as fall leaves come falling down. It brings back memories of growing up here in Lebanon, Ill., where townsfolk still burn leaves. It is illegal, however, in much of Illinois. 

Me being more Californian than Illinoisan now, I bag most of the leaves I rake up on our family's Lebanon property. I guess I just got used to doing it that way for the past quarter of a century in the Golden State. So, I won't be able to smell my raked leaves burning this fall in Lebanon, but I'll feel pretty good about helping keep the air cleaner, as will the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency's Bureau of Air. And, yes, I can hear the neighbors now: Are you crazy, Griggs? Just burn those things!

All of us can help in many ways in the effort to improve air quality. For example, leave the car in the garage, and ride a bicycle to work. If work's too far, try to carpool or use mass transit.

At home, switch to gas or electric outdoor grills, and toss out those old charcoal grills and charcoal lighter fluids, or at least use alternative starters. Have a garage sale, sell your power mower, and use your sale money to buy a new push mower. Yes, manufacturers are making them again, and people are buying them. OK, all right, I'm not one of them yet.

And how about that leaf blower? Put it away inside your garage and use those brooms and rakes. Imagine all that extra exercise you'll get, while helping clean the air.

But wait! There's more. Paint with water-based paints. On an average day in the
Los Angeles area, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, drying
oil-based paints release more smog-forming compounds than all the Southland's oil refineries and gas stations combined. 

Plant trees! Trees take in carbon dioxide, which the leaves' chloroplasts use to manufacture sugars and starches, releasing the unused oxygen into the air. Some 300 trees can counterbalance the air pollution one person produces in a lifetime.

This week, I'm doing my part for cleaner air. I'm not firing up a grill, not cranking up the lawnmower and definitely not painting the house.

I hope that monster leaf blower is quiet for the rest of the week. But the wind
was blowing today, and you know what that means. Crazy.

My sister-in-law could laugh and talk at the same time. It was joyous.

That's how I will remember Gerry Griggs, who passed away a week ago. It's been a sad time for my family, but I'm going to hold on to Gerry's laugh and her smile and be thankful that she graced our lives.

Geraldine Elizabeth Bicz grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., the daughter of Stan and Mary Bicz. When she became a big girl, and it was time to go off to college, Gerry picked little McKendree College, a liberal arts school in little Lebanon, Ill., my hometown. She met my brother, Stan, and the two of them fell in love. They ended up marrying in 1966 in a big, Catholic wedding in Buffalo.

I met Gerry when I was a senior in high school and she a senior at McKendree. Stan brought her home for dinner one evening, so I knew she must have been a special
young woman. Of course, she was. My mom made a fancy dinner, and we ate at the dining-room table, rather than the kitchen table. We ate in the dining room only on Sundays, holidays and special occasions. I remember Gerry sat to the left of Stan and to the right of my mother, and she looked cute in her 1960's hairdo. She met with my approval.

Gerry and I became fast friends when she had to sleep in my room one time, after college graduation but before the wedding. Of course, I wasn't in the room. I was supposed to sleep in my brothers' room, in my brother Brad's bed, while Stan would he in his own bed. My mother told me to be sure to remember that I would need to go to my brothers' room when I came home that Friday night.

I quietly slipped into the house late that night, after drinking a few brews with some other underage beer-drinking buddies, and I naturally went straight to my room. I kicked off my shoes and dropped my britches before Gerry caught the attention of my foggy mind and told me to go to Stan and Brad's room. Yikes! "Sorry, Gerry, I'm outta here!"

The next morning, I had to get up and go to work at Heer's grocery store, where it
didn't take long until I had to regurgitate some of the previous night's barley and hops. Mr. Heer sent me home to get well, as if I didn't have a hangover and didn't deserve to be fired. Nice lads like me didn't have hangovers, so it must've been the flu. Sure. Heh, heh, heh.

Back at home, I visited the bathroom again and then went back to bed. My mom wondered how I could suddenly be so sick. Coming to the rescue, Gerry said it must be the flu or a stomach bug. It was going around, she said. My mom bought it, and went to make me some chicken soup. As she headed off to the kitchen, Gerry looked at me and smiled her joyful smile, and she gave me a fooled-mom wink. She walked away, chuckling.

We were friends from then on, and I knew that my brother had snagged a winner.

Stan and Gerry moved several times over the years for different jobs, and Gerry gave birth to two girls, Jennifer and Jackie. Gerry always enjoyed life and had a lot of friends. Who wouldn't want to be friends with Gerry?

When we learned recently of Gerry's faltering health, she didn't let on that it was serious. She didn't want to worry the family, I'm sure. So, I wasn't worried when she was about to go to the hospital for what she called a surgical procedure. The surgery failed to work. She returned a little more than two weeks ago so that surgeons could give it another try. Still, I wasn't worried. Then, all of a sudden, we were told that the surgery failed again and that we were going to lose Gerry. How could that be? Such cheery, fun, loving people should not leave us too soon.

Godspeed, Gerry. You are gone from us, yet your spirit and smile are with us. I still hear
you talking and laughing at the same time.