Operation Silver Wake Marine's here??

[SSgt Ramsey]

Hey, just curious if any Marine's on this site were involved with Operation Silver Wake, the NEO (Non-Combatant Evacuation Order) out of Tirana, Albania in 1997.

There were 3 operations that I'm aware of from that deployment, Silver Wake, Guardian Retrieval, and Joint Endeavor.

The 3 ships involved were the USS Nassau, USS Nashville, and the USS Pensacola along with the USS Roosevelt Carrier Battle Group LF6F.

The "ground" units that I remember being there were:

26th MEU (SOC)
1st Bn 8th Marine's
MSSG-26
HMM-365 "Blue Knights"
VMA-231

I was attached with Combat Cargo and worked out of Flight-Deck Triage for the duration of the float and went into Albania as a "white coat" helping with the AmCits and refugees. I also went into Sierra Leon in Africa staging for the suspected NEO of Zaire (later done after we left by the next MEU).

If you were't a part of 1/8 or MSSG-26, most of the awards earned were authorized a good time period later than the end of the deployment in May of 97'. I had to find most of mine and I don't know that I actually got all that I rated to be honest...it's a nightmare.

Anybody else there??

[babb0311]

Righr here Bro

[MitchS]

Right here dude. Was part of MSSG 26, assigned to the Nashville (broke down twice during translant).