Expeditionary· Lebanon Multinational Force (Beirut Bombing)
Lebanon 1976 NEO (Operation FLUID DRIVE)
Operation FLUID DRIVE was the evacuation of American and other foreign nationals from Beirut during an earlier and especially violent phase of the Lebanese Civil War.
As fighting engulfed the Lebanese capital and the safety of foreign residents collapsed, a Marine amphibious force offshore was called upon to extract them, lifting evacuees out by sea and helicopter from the embattled city to the ships waiting offshore. The operation moved Americans and citizens of many other nations to safety through a hostile and chaotic environment without becoming embroiled in the fighting itself. It was a noncombatant evacuation, the kind of crisis-response mission the Marine amphibious forces in the Mediterranean were maintained to perform, and it presaged the far longer and more fateful Marine involvement in Beirut that would come six years later under very different circumstances.
Record no. 658