The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2018 33 We headed toward the back of the ground floor to find that the walls had been ripped away, and the entire back was open to the parking lot. A Marine stood watching as Red Cross volunteers entered the building. We moved them out again fairly quickly, as this was still the embassy and theoretically a controlled space. Controlling the chaos seemed like a good first step. As we moved upstairs to look for survivors, it was clear what had happened: the blast had brought down the interior walls on the side nearest to the parking lot and had blown in all the windows. Much of the floor was covered with cinder block-sized chunks of concrete, perhaps two feet in depth—deep enough to hide bodies. As we got to the ambassador’s suite, I remember the destruc- tion not being quite as bad, but debris still lined the hallways. A vivid memory for me is a series of maybe 10 bloody handprints on the wall in the hallway leading to the stairs. Someone had walked down the hallway, steadying themselves against the wall and leaving those handprints as they escaped the building. We cleared the floors room by room, but below the top floor, the job got slower and tougher. Looking for survivors, to my recollection, we found only one person who was still alive and hadn’t already gotten out. The hard work then began as we sought to shift rubble look- ing for people who might be trapped or hidden. Think of the child’s game made up of a set of squares that you slide around trying to make a picture. We would clear one area, maybe 4 feet by 4 feet. Next, we moved the rubble in the next 4 x 4 square into the empty one, and so on and so on, methodically clearing room after room. It was back- breaking work. Each chunk of concrete weighed about 40 pounds and we found very few bodies. This went on for two days until the Israelis eventually showed up with dogs that took over for us. We tried to help with the sewing school, too. But it was difficult. The building was so devas- tated that there was little we could do. I went home after that and slept for a couple of days. The Sheer Extent of the Horror Charlie Slater Senior Financial Management Officer Finished with a few unexpected meetings in Paris, I was in my hotel room packing to return to London to collect my son, Forbes, at his grandmother’s house and fly on to my new assign- ment in Nairobi. A Parisian friend called: “Quick, turn on the television. But first—they said no American was killed in Dar es Salaam.” My wife Lizzie was in Dar. Huh? Embassy blown up in Nairobi. Embassy blown up in Tanza- nia. What?! Catch the train? I was by then so late there wasn’t anything to do but run to catch the train. As I exited at Waterloo, I saw a picture of my good friend and soon-to-be boss, Steve Nolan, already on the cover of a London tabloid…he had blood on his clothes but was alive. I decided to leave my son with my mum and rushed to catch my Nairobi flight. I arrived in Nairobi early Saturday morning not really know- ing what had happened in Dar or Nairobi, except that it was bad, and my wife was—probably—alive. The usual embassy driver and expediter weren’t there to meet me, so I took a taxi. I can’t remember why, but I went to the USAID building. I clearly remember walking with my suitcase into the second floor, where I was met by a whiteboard on an easel. The whiteboard was filled with rows of names: On the left were the “missing,” with names crossed out apparently as they reported in. On the right was a list of the deceased. There were seven friends of mine on the wrong side of the list. My deputy’s name was there, the young mother of three small kids. I can’t conjure up a word for my reaction. That day was a blur. I learned that of my 18 staff, half were either dead or seriously injured. When Steve saw me at about 10 p.m. and asked where I was staying, I realized I had no idea. He took me home with him; I stayed for about three weeks. I couldn’t call Dar, and Dar couldn’t call Nairobi. Calls could get through to the United States, so a friend relayed messages COURTESYOFWORLEYANDJOYCEREED During a whirlwind visit to Africa then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited the destroyed U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Here, on Aug. 18, 1998, she lays flowers at the entrance to Embassy Nairobi.