 First, four days after the attack, then-Vice president George H. W. Bush led a White House team to visit the scene of the attack, and asked Resnicoff—then one of the chaplains for the U.S. Sixth Fleet—to write a report for president Ronald Reagan.Resnicoff had arrived in Beirut on Friday, October 21, to lead a memorial service for a young Marine killed by sniper fire (then only the fifth death of American forces present as part of the international peace-keeping force).He refused to accept transportation back to Sixth Fleet Headquarters in Gaeta, Italy the next day because it was Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, and so ended up being on the scene the morning of October 23, when the attack occurred.