For Release: Immediate  May 14, 2004

For additional information contact: Sergeant Marcus Spade North Carolina National Guard Office of Public Affairs 4105 Reedy Creek Road Raleigh, NC 27607-6410 Phone:(919) 612-5061

RALEIGH -- Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group, North Carolina Army National Guard, is earmarked move to Roanoke Rapids from Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, on or about 1 Oct. A ceremony marking the formal arrival will take place at a later date.

"Fort Bragg is the home of United States Army Special Operations Command and the JFK Special Warfare School. North Carolina is the center of the universe for Green Berets. This Special Forces Company is a natural addition to our force structure in the North Carolina Army National Guard", said Maj. Gen. William E. Ingram Jr., the North Carolina State Adjutant General.

The movement of this unit comes as part of the vision Maj. Gen. Ingram to bring Special Forces to the N.C. National Guard. The National Guard makes up nearly half of the Army's Combat Arms and almost a third of Special Forces Groups. Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group will replace the 1131st Military Police Company which was projected to stand-up in September 2005. This Prestigious unit will place the NCNG on the cutting edge of war fighting.

Special Forces units perform five doctrinal missions: Foreign Internal Defense, Unconventional Warfare, Special Reconnaissance, Direct Action and Counter-Terrorism. These missions make Special Forces unique in the U.S. military, because it is employed throughout the three stages of the operational continuum: peacetime, conflict and war. On an everyday basis, soldiers of the U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) are deployed around the world, living up to their motto - De Oppresso Liber. "To Free the Oppressed."

These changes have been planned for some time and are NOT a product of the current world situation.