On Cockrell Road in Manassas, Virginia, a small building houses the Robert V. McMaugh Memorial American Legion Post 10. With American and POW/MIA flags flying high above it, Post 10 and its members serve as a living tribute to a young Marine who died more than three decades earlier at his post during the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, April 18, 1983.
The terrorist attack against the U.S. Embassy took place six months before the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. service personnel.
Cpl. Robert McMaugh was 21 years old when the blast from an explosives-loaded van took his life as he stood guard inside the front entrance of the embassy. He was one of 63 people killed in the embassy bombing and the seventh Marine Security Guard (MSG) worldwide to die in the line of duty.
A 1980 graduate of Osbourn High School in Manassas, Cpl. McMaugh joined the Marines a few months later. After spending time doing aircraft recovery in California, he volunteered to become an MSG, completed MSG school in Quantico, Virginia, and was sent to Beirut, his first MSG post.
His father, Earl McMaugh, remembers Bobby, as he is called by his family, as “happy, competitive, loved helping out, always wanted the ‘best’ of everything, loved being a Marine, and loved—and was/is loved by—his brother, sisters, and parents.” He described his son as athletic, loving sports, and lettering in soccer, football, and basketball.
Reference: https://www.state.gov/m/ds/rls/260674.htm
