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May 27, 2016

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IFSEC Keynote: Colonel Tim Collins’ Inspirational Iraq speech [VIDEO]

Colonel Tim Collins OBE will deliver a keynote address at IFSEC International 2016.

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If it’s even half as inspirational as the former SAS man’s rousing speech to troops on the eve of battle in 2003, visitors to the ExCeL exhibition centre in London won’t be disappointed. So inspiring was that speech that it was pinned to a wall in the White House.

Arguably, there can be no more motivational a speaker than the person who gets troops fired up to go into battle, where they risk losing their lives. Colonel Tim Collins, also a world-recognised Special Forces and counterinsurgency expert, is just such a person.

In this video, Kenneth Branagh recreates Collins’ eve-of-battle speech to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment as they prepare for the 2003 Iraq invasion.

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Don’t miss Colonel Tim Collins’ inspirational keynote at IFSEC International 2016, taking place on 21 June, 11:30am. Register for IFSEC 2016.

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According to a reporter at the time, Collins’s speech was delivered “completely off the cuff”. Sarah Oliver reported that “He said to me, I’ll have to say a few words to the men to explain to them why they should take their anthrax drugs and malaria pills, or they just won’t bother’. It just grew and grew into something magnificent – it made you realise the true meaning of the term ‘rallying cry’.

“It was just after a sandstorm and all the men were standing around him in a U-shape in the middle of a very dusty courtyard. A lot of the Irish Rangers are very young and he wanted to explain something of the history and culture of Iraq to them. They knew that the public at home had doubts about the rightness of the war, and he wanted to reassure them and tell them why they were there. He delivered the speech without a note and went on at length. By the end, everyone felt they were ready for whatever lay ahead.”

If you would like to see Colonel Tim Collins live at IFSEC International 2016, register here. The full speaker lineup is below.

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