Somalia
October 3, 1994
Arlington National Cemetery, Section 60
Memorial Tree and Stone

In August 1992, the U.S. launched a military airlift to deliver food to sites in Somalia.  American soldiers first came on shore in December 1992, leading a multinational military coalition that began moving food to the starving in a land that had lost more than 350,000 people to hunger, disease and warfare in the preceding year.

With the famine broken, Washington turned over the humanitarian mission to the United Nations in May 1993, but it quickly deteriorated into a small scale war that ended after 18 Americans and an estimated 300 Somalis were killed in a firefight in Mogadishu on October 3-4, 1993.

In remembrance, the Memorial Tree, the American Sweetgum, one of America’s most noble and handsome native trees and growing to a height of 70 or more feet, is an eternal reminder of the sacrifice loved ones made to help a suffering people in Somalia.  At the base of the Memorial Tree is a commemorative black granite stone.