A Patriotic Post.....

[shimmy]

Not sure why these make me feel proud but hey ho...(except the Scottish one)

Extract of the Colonel Tim Collins speech

“We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them. There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly. Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send. As for the others, I expect you to rock their world. Wipe them out if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory. Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there . . .

“If there are casualties of war then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day. Allow them dignity in death . . . there may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign. We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow.”



Rallying the troops

King Henry V at Agincourt (courtesy of Shakespeare): “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers/ For he today that sheds his blood with me/ Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile/ This day shall gentle his condition/ And gentlemen in England now a-bed/ Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here/ And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks/ That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

William Wallace at the Battle of Stirling, 1297 (according to Braveheart): “Fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live – at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom?”

Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg Address, November 1863, 4 months after the battle: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

Winston Churchill on June 4, 1940: “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”