Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group is scheduled to move to Roanoke Rapids from Fort A.P. Hill, Va., on or about Oct. 1, 2004. A ceremony marking the formal arrival will take place at a later date.
According to Army officials, the changes have been planned for some time and are not a product of the current world situation.
"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., North Carolina's Adjutant General. "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."
The movement of the unit comes as part of Ingram's vision 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. Officials said the 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.
Those 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."
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