The magazine had been written, edited and was being "put to bed" by the production department and TIME'S printing plants. After midnight Saturday, the editors' offices in the Time & Life Building were quiet and so, it seemed, was the world. Jacalyn McConnell was alone at the news desk, routinely monitoring the overnight wire-service reports and Cable News Network broadcasts.

Just before 3 a.m., both outlets sounded the first ugly bulletin about the attack on the Marines in Beirut. Such late-breaking major news is the raison d'etre of McConnell's job: she immediately telephoned World Senior Editor Henry Muller and Deputy Chief of Correspondents B. William Mader. Muller, in turn, called Managing Editor Ray Cave. Clearly, the Beirut bombing had to be in the magazine this week.

They arrived at TIME'S offices around 4 a.m. to shift the journalistic process into overdrive. An hour later, the first dispatch was received from White House Correspondent Douglas Brew, but another hour passed before a phone connection could be made with Beirut. Middle East Bureau Chief William Stewart had made it to the bomb site shortly after the explosion and was ready to dictate his first files. Said he: "In almost four years of covering the Middle East, I have never seen a more appalling or sickening sight than I saw this morning."

A dozen other TIME correspondents around the world were up and as officials and experts for their reactions and assessments. Manhattan was still dark as Senior Writer William E. Smith, who wrote the main story, and Associate Editor Kurt Andersen, who wrote the accompanying piece on Marine life, got down to work with Muller; indeed, all three had left the office well after dark the night before. By dawn more than two score other staff members, including Reporter-Researchers Betty Satterwhite Sutler and Nelida Gonzalez-Alfonso, had been called in to help.

At 7:30 a.m., as the magnitude of the slaughter and its potential impact became clear, Cave decided that the carnage in Lebanon would be TIME'S cover story on 6 million copies worldwide.

The last such weekend cover change concerned another Beirut massacre: the 1982 murder by Christian troops of hundreds of civilians in two refugee camps. Smith wrote that story too.

"I visited Beirut and some of the Marine positions only a week ago," Smith said. "There had been a brief lull in Lebanon's bloodshed. It is astonishing how quickly the devastation resumed." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.