Expeditionary· Civil Aid and Humanitarian Operations
Suez Crisis
A noncombatant evacuation during one of the sharpest crises of the Cold War.
When Israel invaded the Sinai on 29 October 1956 and Britain and France moved against Egypt over the Suez Canal, the war zone became dangerous for the thousands of Americans living and working in the region. With commercial travel disrupted, the task of removing them fell to the U.S. Sixth Fleet, which was placed on alert and ordered to evacuate American nationals from Egypt and Israel. A Marine battalion landing team embarked with the fleet took part in the operation, helping lift American citizens and diplomatic personnel out of Alexandria and the Gaza area, part of a Sixth Fleet effort that evacuated some five thousand people from the Middle East over the first days of November. The mission was carried out without combat and without casualties. It became a model studied for later naval evacuation operations.
Record no. 855