Like Peeling an Onion in Reverse

The giant CH-46 helicopter lifted off slowly from its landing pad inside the U.S. Marine compound, its pilot careful to avoid jerking the huge netted crate that hung like ballast beneath it. With machine gunners at the ready, it whirred low over the beachside terrain and headed for U.S. Navy ships on the horizon, there to set down its cargo just as gingerly. Meanwhile, 400 yds. to the west, a steady stream of landing craft nosed into a heavily fortified jetty and began collecting a seemingly endless line of forklift pallets lashed to more wooden crates. "The beach has been working 24 hours a day for the past two days," reported a Marine officer. "They are taking out the heavy equipment first --trucks, bulldozers, engineering equipment."

Thus last week did the Marines begin pulling out of Lebanon -- a complex and potentially harrowing retreat that must be staged under the gunsights of the Muslim militia men who flank them on three sides. Men and materiel will move across a strip of uncontested land directly west of the Marine compound to the beach and out to sea. So far at least, the huge camp breaking was proceeding with remarkable smoothness. Summed up Base Commander Brigadier General James Joy: "The militiamen know our position is that if we are attacked, we are going to defend ourselves very vigorously, and my feeling is that they don't want to get involved." Said Corporal Norman North of Carbondale, Ill.: "I don't feel any differently now than I did a week or two ago. We are as safe now as we were then."

How safe safe is is that? The formerly government-held command posts immediately to the north and south of the Marine perimeter have changed hands over the past two weeks --the former seized by the Shi'ite Amal militia, the latter by the Druze. Marines have managed to establish what Joy calls "limited but very workable contacts" with their new neighbors. One of the more active such channels is a Marine check point on the airport highway about a quarter of a mile from the compound's main gate; the Amal has set up a similar unit about 200 yards down the road. The leathernecks regularly converse with the miltiamen in an effort to keep relations smooth. One sore point arose over the Marines' use of German shepards trained to sniff out explosives carried by passing cars and their occupants. Dogs, explained the Amal, are considered unclean by Muslims. "We told the militiamen we would use the dogs just to check vehicles," says a Marine officer. "They seemed happy with the compromise."

Logistically, says a Marine officer in the Pentagon, withdrawing from Lebanon "is like peeling an onion in reverse." Action begins in the center, with the pullout of nonessential materiel and personnel, while an outer ring of rifle and machine-gun companies holds the compound perimeter until the end. In addition to the tons of equipment already moved out, about 250 men have been ferried to Navy ships off the coast, and more were scheduled to leave over the weekend. The Marines have deployed a 75-ft.-long pontoon bridge known as a Green-beach to carry truck-drawn 155-mm howitzers and other heavy artillery directly to the wells of amphibious ships. Current planning calls for the removal or destruction of everything in the compound, including the bulldozing of latrines and bunkers.

If, as expected, the Marines are unable to turn the military base and airport over to the Lebanese Army, the last contingent would probably leave secretly at night. The unit's departure would be announced only after its 100 or so members, carrying little more than their personal weapons and kit bags, are safely aboard Sixth Fleet ships.

Despite the heavy casualties inflicted on them in Lebanon and their increasingly exposed position, quite a few of the Marines are less than enthusiastic about sea duty. Says Lance Corporal Tom Auld of Pittsburgh: "I'd rather stay on shore here than spend a long time steaming around in circles." An understandable qualm perhaps, but it would be difficult to imagine more confining quarters than the bunkers into which the Marines were driven while trying to keep the peace in Lebanon.