In late 1981 the 1-505 Battalion 82nd Airborne was assembled at the Alvin C. York theater for a briefing by our commanding officer, William "Wild Bill" Garrison, who declared, "Men, we've been given a mission. I can't tell you where we are going, but I can tell you it's gonna be in the Middle-East." As you can imagine the excited paratroopers had several different hot-spots in mind upon hearing this. That evening, while watching the local Fayetteville news, we learned that our destination would be the Sinai, on the Israeli-Egyptian border. Like the 82nd troopers always say, "first to go, last to know".

So we set about training non-stop for our role as part of the Multinational Force and Observers. Would there be trouble? No one was really sure - we would be the first American rifle battalion in history to be deployed there.

An Israeli EL-AL 747 picked us up at Ft. Bragg and flew us non-stop to an airstrip down in the southernmost part of the peninsula . We turned in our 82nd berets once on board and they issued us our MFO berets. We deplaned, grabbed our rifles and rucksacks & humped (marched in two columns, on either side of the only road there) down to the base camp, while the Israeli army was removing the last of their countrymen still there. So we saw truck and bus loads of young folks passing us on the main supply road back towards Eilat. Great, we thought, this looks like a really swell place!

Little did we know at the time but the only ones left, the Bedouins and the Israeli soldiers would be our only remaining cohabitants in the region. Upon the Israeli withdrawal, it was a veritable ghost town. Bedouins, a handful of Egyptian soldiers scattered along the remote checkpoints of Zone C, and us.

The first few weeks we stayed at the south base camp. Then, just prior to the land transfer, we headed out into the desert to set up our observation posts and checkpoints. On April 25, 1982 the Sinai was given back to Egypt. Further north, at the Israeli-Lebanon border the war had begun.

Would it end up another Arab-Israeli war like before? We did not know, but we had to be ready. If we got into a hornets nest, we knew what would be called upon us to do.

Fortunately, the war did not spread to Egypt, although we stayed on a high state of readiness.

After a while, we got the OP/CP's squared away, and developed a wonderful relationship with the desert nomads. They were given needed medical attention from our special forces medics who were the closest thing to an Arabic speaking doctor many of them would ever encounter. Well, after six months it was time to pass the torch to the soldiers who would follow us. A year or so later, we saw that a plane carrying returning MFO troops from the U.S. 101st Division, crashed in Newfoundland, taking the lives of all those fine young people who had done so much, in the name of peace on earth.

I hope that you never forget about them.

Return to Tales from the Sinai

Return to The MFO Home Page