Marine General’s Epic Speech to his Warriors. Untold History of Battle of Ramadi.

[Applause] the Warriors that we don't talk a lot about and history is fickle about who they write the stories about in the 20 years since we've gotten back uh from radi there has been no official history to record the exploit of the people that are assembled here today which I think is a crime and you've seen other units in other cities telling their their story to the news and there are books that have been written and somehow to date The Magnificent Bastards of ratti have still not had their story told and so what I wanted to do is just tell you a couple things that maybe you didn't know about this magnificent group of men that 21 years ago today the first Marine Division was standing outside the gates of Baghdad waiting to knock out dictator 21 years ago today second Battalion fourth Marines was stuck with the 31st me in okona for almost a year and the minute those poor souls came home they made a feline for the exits because of stoploss and they thought that they had missed the war of their generation 21 years ago today 230 young men were in high school or had just recently graduated and they had seen the news and they had either enlisted or they were about to enlist and they had no idea what history had in store for them 21 years ago today as a division came back from Iraq and we started losing the folks that didn't want to uh stick around for the next deployment to okanawa uh our numbers went down to about 450 Souls which is small and by the end of October we were at the lowest uh point of of our uh of our Manning strength and we were attending the Marine cor ball in November and General Mattis tapped me on the shoulder and he said hey partner your Battalion is going to be the first to go back to Iraq next year you're not going to go to okwa which I breathe you know every good fighting person wants to uh go to an adventure and I asked him sir how much time do we have to get ready he says you're leaving in in January Mighty this is the 10th of November and so over the course of the next 2 and 1/2 months cuz we didn't actually leave until SE till uh February every single graduating class from the school of infantry on both coasts were vectored to this parade deck and sergeant major Booker and the first sergeants were joining people virtually in an end of cycle of new of new joints showing up we joined the last people to this Battalion two weeks before we deployed and my guess is that they never fired the weapons that they were assigned until they were firing him at the enemy a few months later that is not the way you wish that you go to war in many cases we were virtual strangers and we were sent to a fight that back then they called stability and support operations and we thought we were going to be building schools and handing out soccer balls and running midcap and doing all the things that you would see after a conflict and the day that we took took over radi on 13 March 2004 we took our first casualties in fact the casualties were so horrible that I had never actually seen anything um people that survived those wounds and Captain schroer even pulled me aside uh with some Grim news and that did not look like the picture that had been painted for us it did not look like we were out helping a nation to recover and over the course of the next several weeks we had increasing violence build and build and build until the 20 years ago today and we lost our first Marines on patrols and we took some wounds but it was still of of a manageable level but on the 6th of April everything changed uh for in our worlds uh many of you lost your youth on the 6th of April the the blush of of what is possible may have seemed no longer possible and as the patrols went out that morning the companies executing their missions as they were assigned like any other day that they went out they didn't imagine that history would deal them a fate that few had expected sergeant major Booker and I were back at the command post the PA started coming in of Marines that were wounded and it wasn't in one location like you normally would see or a single event this was the entire city seemed to be attacking the Battalion at once and we had Marines pinned down in the cemetery along Route Michigan we had Marines pinned down at the tank graveyard uh overwatching that local they were at the Fishel Under Fire and the urf's quick reaction forces were sent out to try to figure out what was going on and get a get our people back uh to safety and as the day snowballed we had the unfortunate reports of Marines that had lost their lives and by the end of that evening a mhip Mor was created out of the combat Outpost and I remember standing the start major Booker under a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling and seeing uh my worst nightmare of Marines that we were going to have to send home to their parents and as you can imagine the Marines were angry they were bewildered everything that they thought that they were deployed for was no longer valid and that this enemy was not here to welcome us but we are going to have to fight them to The Bitter End the next day the patrols went back out on the 7th of April and within about an hour the call started coming in again that they were Marines were receiving contact but unlike the 6th of April on the 7th of April these were no longer marines that could be fooled by the treachery of the residents in radi but this time you had men that overnight became Harden veterans and they took the fight to the enemy and they fought in some of the same neighborhoods that they had the day previous and they continued out to the Sophia District uh pursuing these terrorists and I got a call the next day from the division Commander that 200 enemy bodies were stacked up the morg in ratti and that's in addition to the bodies that had already been claimed by their families and so never again would the Magnificent bastards be fooled by the treachery of people that smile at you when you're passing and then plant a bomb into the road uh when they think they they got you unawares that we were going to fight them General Mattis always said no better friend and no worst enemy these are their worst enemies these marines of second Battalion fourth Marines on the 8th of April all the uh platoons filed up to their line their respective lines of departure to take the fight back on the third day and they line up in the dark and the guidons are snapping in the breeze and they cross on time cuz that's what our leaders and assisted upon and they went hunting for the enemy and all day long on the 8th of April they looked for for these bad guys and by the end of the day we had no contact we had no idea where the enemy had gone to and we finally got reports back that night that the planned three-day Jihad that they had they had meticulously laid out that were going to eject him to far from the city it spent itself after two days you killed them all [Applause] because because we had a motto that you kick a man once he's down on the 10th we figured out where they had gone to lick their wounds and Echo company and weapons company went out there uh an operation bug hunt and killed a whole bunch more of them and we know it was effective because when you look at our combat reports we really didn't have any uh significant firefights for over a month after the 10th of April the city heated back up over the course of the summer more people filtered in to try to get rid of the nuisance that was too4 and they just couldn't do it meanwhile other cities along the Euphrates were blowing up FIA boiled over Aline boiled over heat boiled over and General Mattis summarized it in a book later that he said as the division was fighting across the entirety of alanar Province he didn't have to worry about what was going on in aramani because the Marines of 24 held means you never broke it means you'd never let the enemy breathe again after their treachery on the 6th of April it meant that they will tell Tales to their children as they write their histories of how terrible an enemy you were chasing them to their chasing them to the end when we reped in September of that year most of you don't know because you'd already gone to alad and we were flying back to to Southern California that we left small um groups of nocos in the in the fobs to turn over to 25 that replaced us um for their six-month deployment and somehow the enemy foolishly underestimated Fox company who was sitting out in the snake pit weapon Splatoon Fox company sitting out in the snake pit and I didn't see Gunner Dunham here yet maybe maybe he's out there lurking he counted 50 Iraqi bodies in the street after they foolishly tried to take a snake pit on the last day that we were in that City I hear a voice ladies and gentlemen it's tough it's tough to make those sacrifices to bond with people within your squad and the company and the Battalion we don't do it for Metals but we would have we wouldn't mind the little recognition that these marines did what they were asked to do and they did it in a fashion that virtually no other Battalion has done before since in this war and I'm hoping that this newest generation of two4 Marines understands the honor and Legacy those that went before them and even though this looks like a a motorcycle reunion um the these are the finest infantry Marines and and support marines that this country has produced in this generation and they have written a chapter that I hope is developed and is retold that a serve as a marker for generations to come ladies and gentlemen those of that did not serve with the magnificent basss in ratti in 2004 I would ask you to give a round of applause a long earned Round of Applause for the veterans 20 years since [Applause]

Channel: Day of Battle

Views: 11,516

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Id: sgRM43UStTM

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2024