Military: Departure of the Peacekeepers

The departure had the gloomy comic overtones of a Graham Greene novel. The last 68 soldiers of the U.S. peacekeeping force were leaving Grenada, accompanied by Jeeps, weapons and their mascot, an island mutt named Butch. As a tropical rainstorm poured down on the Cuban-built Point Salines airport last week, the Royal Grenadian Police band bravely played The Star-Spangled Banner, and Grenadian Prime Minister Herbert Blaize presided over a truncated farewell ceremony from the back of his sedan.

Point Salines airfield was the focus of the Oct. 25, 1983, invasion of Grenada (pop. 90,000), which involved 6,000 American troops and left 19 Americans dead. President Reagan's "rescue mission" followed a bloody coup in which Marxist Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was killed and extremists seized power. For more than a year afterward, the U.S. maintained a 245- member peacekeeping force on the island. Now the only remaining soldiers are two legal experts, a financial officer and some 25 U.S. Special Forces instructors who will remain until September, training the Grenadian police special service unit in counterinsurgency measures. The 80-man S.S.U. is one of five such units that the U.S. is sponsoring in the eastern Caribbean islands to help maintain security.