On Duty in Beirut: "If you receive fire, you'll return fire."

In 1980, Joe Johns was a Marine Security Guard at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut — an old hotel on the Corniche, protected by little more than sandbags, a blast wall, and thirty Americans' worth of resolve. He arrived with one order from his battalion commander: if you receive fire, you'll return fire. Within his first hour in the embassy, the React alarm sent the detachment scrambling into position.In this episode, Joe walks through a year of standing post in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. He describes the ambush on Ambassador John Gunther Dean's motorcade — three rounds in the bullet-resistant glass right where the ambassador's head had been — and how Dean walked back into the embassy looking like he'd been through a storm. He recounts the night Hezbollah set French rockets on a timer aimed at the Marine House bar during a Friday-night gathering, and the scramble into React positions as the Marines waited to be overrun. And he tells the story of the young Marine who cracked under the strain, leveled a shotgun at post one, and was off the compound within twelve hours.Joe also reflects on the human side of the post — the Lebanese staff who became family — and the psychological toll he didn't feel until he left, when the pressure of that year finally caught up with him in Paris.