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A history written by the creative, by the bold, by the audacious. A history written by the actions of America's finest men and women who volunteered to fight for a future they would never see. But, before there was an army, before there was a nation, there were Rangers. Men who ranged the colonies, writing the rules of unconventional warfare. Those words and the men who wrote them helped a small army stand up against an empire. Our independence was won unconventionally. It was kept by audacity. The years passed by and Americans continued to find a way to keep this country intact.
Battles and wars continued to be fought and won thanks to the unconventional. Germany has invaded Poland and has bombed many towns. The war between France and Germany began again at 3:30 p.m. The missions became more daring. The odds closer to impossible. A date which will live in infamy. In the 1940s, America found itself in a fight for freedom. And winning would take more than just unconventional tactics.
It would take volunteers to solve the world's toughest problems. Volunteers with the audacity to win against the odds. The descendants of the men who arranged the colonies were now piercing the Atlantic wall. Beaches of Normandy were filled with men, and at the point of the needle, the tip of the spear, at the foot of his 100-foot cliffs, the Rangers. Never has the measure of the Allied war against the German been so strident, so purposeful as now. For at this moment, three Allied armies composing an estimated 1 million men are streaming across the Rhine river. Ghost armies were built.
Dummy tanks, fake artillery, and loudspeakers lined the Rhine. Drawing German forces away to save nearly 30,000 American lives. Now we're breaking into our programs for the second time tonight. Berlin has fallen. Others were saving history from being destroyed and learning how to rebuild a civilization. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, and city managers traded suits and ties for uniforms and got to work. Special operations was no longer an idea.
Victory and valor during war meant that it was an official formation. Since World War II, guerrilla operations have flared up in dozens of places around the world. A prime answer is this man, and many others like him. The men of the special forces. [snorts] 7 years after the war, an OSS Jedburgh named Aaron Bank was given a corner of Fort Bragg, 10 men, and no doctrine. The Army saw no need for a force trained in unconventional warfare, but Bank built it anyway. On June 19, he activated the 10th Special Forces Group, built to fight a guerrilla war behind Soviet lines.
Every step along the way taken by volunteers who ran, jumped, or climbed into the unknown along with volunteers beside them, never asking what their country could do for them. And these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training. It's about successfully trying to get the American hostages out of Tehran. helicopters appear to have landed first. when it took off on a mistaken bearing that it sliced into the helicopter. Special operations needed its own aviation.
General Edward Meyer directed the Army to find a solution. They went to Fort Campbell. Volunteers from the 101st stepped forward. No doctrine, no manual, just a directive and an unwillingness to quit. What they created would eventually become the military's premier rotary wing unit. Since then, they've flown America's best into every combat mission across the globe. Grenada, we were told, was a friendly island paradise for tourists.
Well, it wasn't. We got there just in time. This moment, US forces are engaged in action in Panama. Today, I have ordered 1,700 additional Army troops and 104 additional armored vehicles to Somalia. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes in Afghanistan. None of this was possible without a cost. In 1776, 56 men took the risk to pen their names to paper in the face of an empire to declare independence. And in the 250 years since, millions have volunteered and raised their hands to fight to keep our independence alive. Of those millions, tens of thousands raised their hands again. And again, to continue the unconventional work of the colonial rangers, to answer the call for volunteers for nothing but a promise of the
nation's most dangerous missions.
