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Lt. Col. Tim Collins 20 March 2003 With one phrase, Lt. Col. Tim Collins, commander of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish, summed up the task in hand for the British forces waiting to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq. Collins was addressing his 800 men, an arm of Britain's 16 Air Assault Brigade, at Fort Blair Mayne, a Kuwaiti desert camp 20 miles south of the Iraqi border. Here is as much of his extraordinary speech as has been reported. "We go to liberate not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering...

I thought this kind of struck home with Operation Iraqi Freedom: Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real...

<p>The eve of battle is a time for commanders to rally their troops. Some do it more memorably than others. Following are excerpts from a speech by Lt. Col. Tim Collins, commander of the First Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, delivered last Wednesday at Fort Blair Mayne in northern Kuwait, before the battalion left for Iraq.</p>

Major General J.N. Mattis of the United States Marine Corps delivered this impressive eve-of-battle message to the 1st Marine Division, then in Kuwait: For decades, Saddam Hussein has tortured, imprisoned, raped, and murdered the Iraqi people; invaded neighboring countries without provocation; and threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. The time has come to end his reign of terror. On your young shoulders rest the hopes of mankind. When I give you the word, together we will cross the Line of Departure, close with those forces that choose to fight, and destroy them. Our fight is not with the...

Lt Col Tim T. Collins, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group, talks on March 19, 2003, to his men about their imminent deployment on war fighting operations in Iraq. “It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive, but 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. “The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his Nemesis and that we are bringing...

Toogood Reports [Monday, March 24, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ We do not stand alone. Contrary to the story suggested by much of the world's elite media, our boys do not fight alone. It is true, however, that our military allies are few. And thank G-d for that! On the eve of battle, Lt. Colonel Tim Collins, commander of the 1st Battalion of The Royal Irish, addressed his men on the Kuwait-Iraqi border. The London Times' Sarah Oliver reported,"Wearing his kukri, the Gurkha blade that he is entitled to carry as a Gurkha commander, Colonel Collins spoke to his 800...

LONDON -- Tim Collins, a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel in the British army, has become a media hero, famous not for deeds performed in battle in Iraq but for words delivered to his men before they moved against the forces of Saddam Hussein. Collins, commander of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, addressed his troops at their camp in Kuwait. His words, which reportedly had many of his men close to tears, left admirers calling to mind President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and the "band of brothers" speech by William Shakespeare's Henry V character before the 1415 Battle of...

The Second Gulf War has already produced its first great work of oratory, a battlefield speech that could stand, in an unassuming way, alongside Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Churchill’s inspiring wartime rhetoric. A century hence, people will still be reading the speech written by Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Collins, the 42-year-old commander of The Royal Irish battle group, which he delivered to his troops in Kuwait on Wednesday afternoon, just hours before they went into battle. Colonel Collins has a history degree, but does not look like a poet. Readers of The Times will have seen his photograph, in shades and combat...