Retired Master Gunnery Sgt. John W. Nash, former communication chief for the information assurance department, G-6, II Marine Expeditionary Force, experienced the bombing first hand.

 Around 6:30 a.m. Oct. 23, 1983, while most of the Marines slept, a suicide bomber drove a truck with the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of TNT into the Beirut Marine Corps barracks.

 “It was a four-story building that crumbled like a toothpick,” Nash said. “There was no time for the Marines to react, take cover or protect themselves.”

 It was only by sheer luck Nash survived the bombing mostly unharmed.

 “I was awake lying in my cot,” he said. “I was a corporal, at the time, talking to the corporal next to me. We were discussing whether we should get up and go get some chow or just lie there. Had we gotten up for chow, we would have died. We were the only two survivors in the area.”

 For Nash this was just the beginning, he had been buried alive. After he and the other corporal dug themselves out, they began searching for clothes, weapons and ammunition, he said. They were unsure of what had happened.

 “There was so much black smoke you couldn’t see and all you could hear was screaming,” Nash said. “There was so much confusion we really didn’t know what was going on.”

 Master Sgt. Emanuel Simmons, a staff noncommissioned officer in charge, 2nd Supply Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, also survived the bombing.

 “When I woke up, I thought the ceiling to the room had caved in,” he said. “I didn’t think I was buried under the whole building. So I lay buried and burning in the ruble.”

 When the survivors figured out what had happened, they immediately set up medical quarters at Marine Amphibious Unit Service Support Group. The path from the barracks to the medical center is something Nash says he will never forget.

 “We called the trail from the building to the medical center ‘the path of death,’” he said. “We called it that because a lot of the Marines who were wounded were trying to make it to medical. They were crawling missing arms and legs just trying to make it. The path was covered in bodies of those who didn’t make it. We were just looking for guys who were still alive and take them to medical.”

 Nearly 25 years later the Marine Corps still remembers the attack and has learned from it.

 “The Marine Corps has learned a great deal since then,” he said. “I do a lot of public speaking and I have spoken to Marines from all over and the feedback is incredible. Marines are always hungry for that information. They want to know what happened and how they can prevent it.”

 Simmons added he hopes people never forget what the young men sacrificed. They came as peacekeepers and left as victims.