Officers, Warrant Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Sergeants, National Guards and Civilian Personnel of the Armed Forces.
Today, when our Church celebrates with splendor the Entrances of the Mother of God, the Heroic General and Great Patron of the Greek Arms, today is the day that the Greek State has appointed for the celebration of its Armed Forces, for the celebration of the sleepless Guards of the Motherland on land, at sea and in the air that guard and ensure the integrity of Greece day and night.
And this was done by the Greek State because the contribution of the Armed Forces to the Nation’s struggles for its survival and well-being is invaluable, lasting and eternal translating into bloody struggles, unspeakable sacrifices and moments of greatness and glory that formed a tradition of martial virtue with insurmountable historical depth and grandeur.
A martial virtue praised by Homer in his Iliad.
A virtue that gave birth to Marathon fighters, Salamino fighters and pro-fighters of Thermopylae and Plataea.
A virtue that gave birth to the heroic Hierolochites of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, and formed the invincible Macedonian phalanxes of Alexander the Great and the continental armies of King Pyrrhus.
A martial virtue that we will find unchanged again in the soldier Emperors, the great Generals and the haughty Akrites of Byzantium.
A virtue that was kept alive and unenslaved by thieves during the Turkish occupation.
A virtue that reached its zenith, its zenith, in the great, brilliant explosion of the Nation with the haughty Fighters of 1821, the Gunners, Captains, Admirals and Firemen who brought the Nation its longed-for Freedom.
The indomitable soul of the Greek warriors did not stop fighting for the Motherland during most of the previous century.
Even after the hasty and unprepared 1897, History saw them emerging victorious and confident from the battles of the Macedonian Struggle and entering the battlefields of the Balkan Wars with unbridled drive, vigor and faith.
He marveled at them outmaneuvering the Ottoman forces at Sarantaporos, defeating them at the lake of Giannitsa and entering our Thessaloniki in triumph, on the day of Saint Demetrius!
They boasted of defeating the Turkish fleet in Helles and Lemnos and liberating one after another the islands of the Eastern Aegean by imposing the naval power of the Nation!
He saw them advance to Bizani and liberate Ioannina together with Northern Epirus.
He saw them put the Bulgarian troops to flight in the battle of Kilkis – Lakhana, achieve a brilliant victory in Doirani and continue unstoppably towards the Straits of Kresna.
The time of world recognition meant at Skra, during the First World War, when the Greeks amazed everyone once again with their impetuousness on the battlefield.
A little later they will chase, we will chase the national dream on the opposite shore of the Aegean, in Ionia and Asia Minor, they will cross the Sangarios River and raise the Greek flag in the blood-stained Kale Grotto.
We are proud of them. , they repulsed the elite Italian Divisions with unparalleled military vigorup there on our Pindos the peaks“, to pursue them deep into the Albanian territory, liberating Northern Epirus for the second time.
And they continued to submit the credentials of their military value and also of their indomitable Greek soul in the Forts of the METAXA line in our Macedonia and then in the Battle of Crete, in El Alamein, in Rimini and in the glorious ADRIAS Destroyer, with the Hierolokhites of Christodoulos Tsigantes and the legendary Locazides of Andreas Kallinskis to build the heroic traditions of the Greek Special Forces and Special Operations.
This was followed by the combat action of the Greek Expeditionary Force in distant Korea, where we again excelled in the frozen heights and in the skies around the 38th Parallel.
While a little later we defended ourselves with our blood, “the same, the same language, the same and the same kind” in the martyred Cyprus, confirming the indestructible ties that connect the Hellenism of the Metropolis with the Hellenism of the Megalonisos.
We are proud of them in both good and bad times of history. We are proud of them because of them we exist today.
Men and Women of the Armed Forces,
We are really lucky, really lucky and blessed all of us younger people who come from such people.
We are lucky to be able to look back to such deep strong and unshakable roots.
We are blessed to lean on such heroic traditions and relics, that we can drink and quench our thirst from such intoxicating yarns.
Our predecessors in arms, when the time and the historical moment came, crushed ideologies and revisionisms, crushed entire empires, amazed humanity with their bravery and made the word “Greek” synonymous with self-denial and courage and the struggle “over altars and hearths ».
The struggles they fought then clearly illuminate the Avenue of Honor and Duty that we must and are obliged to walk, if the call of History so defines it.
This Avenue, this road is uphill, difficult and impassable from now on, since the time of peace, as it includes all that is required by the harsh “preparation for war”.
It is hard and difficult because it requires constant exercises, marches, voyages, flights, shootings, services, shifts, watches and all those activities that ensure our readiness for immediate and effective reaction day and night, 365 days a year, against any scheme .
Sleepless Guardians…
Sleepless Guardians…
All of us who belong to the great and honored family of the Armed Forces walk this uphill road, serving willingly, faithfully, humbly, determinedly and quietly, with honor and pride to the Motherland.
The work produced by the Armed Forces is unsurpassed, it is unique. It is a project that gives birth to and offers the good of National Security against external threats. It is a work inextricably linked and intertwined with the freedom, independence, integrity and dignity of Greece and every Greek citizen.
With a lot of hard work, toil, sweat, toil, but also with blood in the last four years we have faced many and very serious crises, doing what I have just said, while at the same time, operating methodically and with a plan, we have further protected the Motherland by acquiring new weapon systems, ensuring and modernizing to the maximum extent possible what we already have, with the rational reorganization of our structures, with the upgrading of our infrastructure in areas of increased strategic importance such as Crete and Alexandroupoli with the design of new naval bases and military airfields with the recruitment of executives, with the upgrading of existing ones and the building of new alliances and partnerships at the level of defense diplomacy, with almost all our Balkan neighbors, but also with important Arab countries as well as with Israel, of course with our strategic partners, the USA and France.
At the same time, and without making any discount at all on our main mission, we stood with unparalleled consistency on the side of the Greek society, as the Armed Forces have always done in all kinds of natural disasters and natural disasters, in adverse weather conditions and also in the pandemic. No Greek will forget the friendly and smiling faces of our frontline staff at the vaccination centers we operated during the COVID period. Wherever and whenever the Motherland needed us, regardless of the difficulties and the nature of the events, we were, are and will be there.
For this I want to once again thank each and every one of you individually.
Let me thank you, because you carry out your sacred mission with absolute faith and incomparable devotion, as befits and as it should be for Greek soldiers, everywhere you serve, in the guns, tanks, Operations Centers, outposts, warships, submarines , in cockpits, radars and all your ramparts, rocks and positions, from Othonou to Kastellorizo and from Ormenio to Gavdos.
But I also want to thank you and the members of your families from the bottom of my heart, for the patience and determination they show in the face of the idiosyncrasies and special requirements of the military profession, as well as for the support they offer you, so that you can be able to consistently and efficiently carry out your difficult and very demanding mission.
And I want to emphasize emphatically, that in a period of great instability, severe conflicts and intense international rearrangements, in a time when the fight “over altars and hearths” becomes existential for entire Nations, the defensive pillar of our own Nation, the hard shell of our Motherland, its Armed Forces, absolutely ensure national sovereignty, erecting walls of strong deterrence on land, sea and air against any threat, being always and forever ready to impose the will of the Nation if the occasion calls for it .
We are ready and we face our fate head on, with faith but also with determination, with courage and with prudence, remaining unshakable in our positions on the ramparts, ready to honor the Weapons the Sacred, as History, the Nation expects and demands from us and our ancestors, but also the Greek people, so that whenever necessary, we can protect the Motherland.
This unique Homeland, which is the holiest, most respected and most precious thing we have, just as Plato wrote two and a half thousand years ago, in these places where we live today:
“Mother and father of the other ancestors of the respondents
more honorable is the Fatherland,
and more modestly and holier
and to a great extent
and by Gods
and for people who have minds”
Officers, Warrant Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Servicemen, National Guards and Civilian Personnel of the Armed Forces,
this is exactly our legacy,
this is precisely our sacred heritage,
this is exactly our Fate.
Let’s be the Sleepless Guardians of the Country and the Nation!
Happy birthday to all of you!!!
The Virgin Mary with you.
Cheer for the nation!!!
Long live the Greek Armed Forces!!!
General Konstantinos Floros
Head of GEETHA
Read the original at Defence247.gr
