[at-l] Fw: kinda cool when I get to interview one of our own

[Bob C]

Terry produces the MATC website and is a reporter for the Lewiston Sun Journal, which originally published this story.
Terry produces the MATC website and is a reporter for the Lewiston Sun Journal, which originally published this story.

Lebanon: A Mainer survives 

By Terry Karkos, Staff Writer
Thursday, July 20,2006 

David B. Field of Hampden

Lebanon: A Mainer survives 

By Terry Karkos, Staff Writer
Thursday, July 20,2006 

David B. Field of Hampden

Getting into Lebanon on July 6 was easy for the three Americans, including one from Maine, who flew to Beirut to help the country create and manage a national trail system.

Getting out Monday was the hard part. That escape was by a Marine helicopter without doors flying under threat of missile attacks over the Mediterranean Sea as it made its way to Cyprus.

"We were the lucky ones, the first ones out," said David N. Startzell, executive director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. He spoke Wednesday morning from his home in Shepherdstown, W.Va. He arrived there Tuesday night.

After Israel bombed, shelled and invaded southern Lebanon, Startzell and former ATC directors David B. Field of Hampden and Marianne Skeen of Decatur, Ga., were among the thousands forced to flee Beirut.

"I can't say enough about the young Marines on the helicopters," Field said Wednesday afternoon after a flight from Paris and four hours into an eight-hour layover at Newark International Airport in New Jersey.

"There were 30 of us in one helicopter, with a Marine sitting at a really big machine gun, and the back door open - all the way across the Mediterranean - and there was a woman Marine manning the starboard machine guns," Field said.

"We weren't terribly scared; it was more like anxiousness. But, it's nice not to be woken up by bombing," he added.

Until last Wednesday, Startzell, Field and Skeen worked with Lebanese officials and the U.S. Agency for International Development on the proposed 180-mile-long Lebanon Mountain Trail. That connection is what got them out of Beirut in the first wave of evacuations, Startzell said.


David N. Startzell, executive director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy

On July 12, the trio was walking parts of the trail, individually with Lebanese guides, in different regions, when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers.

Field, who retired on June 30 as head of the forestry department at the University of Maine at Orono after a 30-year career, said he was the farthest south of the three, nearest the area of the raid.

"We were up in the bush. I was hiking up an actual Roman road when the Lebanese with me got a cell phone call from the U.S. Embassy, saying, 'Hey! Get him back here!'" Field said.

Startzell said officials were anticipating retaliatory strikes from Israel.

Field said he and his guide dawdled, even though the man later told him they knew about the Hezbollah raid by early Wednesday morning, but didn't want to make him nervous.

Instead of taking the coastal route back to Beirut, the trio had to go through the mountains.

"We got increasingly anxious," Field said.

Startzell, Field and Skeen had been scheduled to go to southern Lebanon on July 13, but on Wednesday, "the Hezbollah refused to give us clearance to go into that area," Field said.

The southern terminus of the Lebanon Mountain Trail is the biblically famous Mount Hermon (elev. 9,230 feet) on the Syrian border.

Soon, they were in the thick of things. They had visited the Lebanese Army's headquarters in Sidon, "which got blasted the next day after we went down there. We went over the brand new road from Beirut to Damascus, and saw the Lebanese Army had tanks under one bridge, and, on Thursday, the Israelis took the bridge out," Field said.

By Wednesday night, the three were back in their rooms at the Hotel Cavalier in West Beirut when Israeli missiles began raining on southern Beirut.

"They bombed the hell out of south Beirut. Where we were, we heard these tremendous bomb blasts that woke me up," Field said.

Their hotel was in the central part of Lebanon's capital.

"It was in a high-rise canyon, so, once in a while, we'd hear explosions, but we really couldn't see much. Sound reverberated so much that you couldn't tell what was hitting where. We relied on CNN to figure out what was getting hammered," Startzell said.

"Every time there was an explosion, it would echo and sound like two explosions, but the first real scare was the sonic booms. People were just cringing in the street, and would look up at the sky," Field said.

"About the closest any rocket hit to us was the lighthouse near the coast, eight blocks from the hotel," Startzell said. West Beirut's black-and-white-striped lighthouse was obliterated by an Israeli missile.

Evacuation talks and rumors began Friday and Saturday.

"The Lebanese people are great, but there are some mean people around. People would stop us on the street and apologize to us. We said, 'Look, it's only an inconvenience for us, but you have to live with it,'" Field said.

Anti-American sentiment was also rising.

"A lot of them are pissed off at us for our unqualified support of Israel," Field said.

On Saturday, a Lebanese man took them to his place overlooking Beirut for a change of pace.

Twice, Field said, he heard unmanned Israeli drones scouting out the area.

More bombs fell on Sunday during church services, creating, for Field, the height of surrealism.

By Monday morning, they were told to get to the U.S. Embassy as fast as they could, with only one suitcase each. There, they waited several hours for a helicopter to arrive.

Officials "had to negotiate with the Israelis not to fire in that airspace, and, with Hezbollah, so, we had to wait for that window of opportunity to fly out," Startzell said.

Both Startzell and Field said they were saddened for the Lebanese people and the growing conflict.

"The Israeli assaults targeted the infrastructure, which took them 15 years to create after they emerged from a 30-year civil war," Startzell said.

"This is going to devastate everything there, including the tourism," Field said.

Prior to July 12, both said Lebanese Tourism Minister Joe Sarkis told them this year was Lebanon's best tourism year since 1960.

"These people have been through a lot, so, it was sad to see their growing optimism and economic recovery wiped out in less than a week.

"I just hope the United Nations and the European Union will take a little more proactive stance, and insist on a cease-fire, because, at this point, all these assaults is not doing anybody any good," Startzell added.