| abstract | - Harlem Hellfighter Officer: We're surrounded! We have to hold this line! Harlem Hellfighter Officer: Hold, men! They're coming! Harlem Hellfighter Officer: Here they come! Fire at will! Harlem Hellfighter Officer: Hold your ground! Stand fast! Narrator: We came from all over the world, so many of us thinking this war would be our rite of passage, our great adventure. Let me tell you, it was no adventure. Harlem Hellfighter: Flame trooper! Let her sing! Pump 'em full of lead! Harlem Hellfighter: Airship incoming! More coming in on the right! Open fire! Keep shooting! Harlem Hellfighter: Shiiiiit! Shiiiiit! Harlem Hellfighter: They're getting through, rally at the church, we have to hold there! Germans climb through windows. Harlem Hellfighter: Comin' in through the window! Watch behind you! Narrator: New killing machines, like the tank, changed the shape of the war overnight. Luckily, they were mostly on our side, mostly. Perspective changes to that of a British Mark V tank gunner. British Tank Crew #1: Our boys in the church are overrun! We need to push through! British Tank Crew #2: PBI are counting on us! British Tank Crew #1: Use that Emma Gee! Sweep the ground! British Tank Crew #2: Keep going, driver! British Tank Crew #1: That's our flyboys up there! British Tank Crew #2: Keep your eyes on the ground, son! British Tank Crew #2: They're moving in from the trenches! Use that machine gun! Mow them down! British Tank Crew #2: We've got them on the run! Push on! Forward! For King and Country! We'll chase Fritz all the way back to Berlin! British Tank Crew #2: Incoming! British Tank Crew #1: Field gun took her apart! We're just a big fat target for that thing! British Tank Crew #2: Move, driver! Go around! If you get a clear shot on that blasted field gun, you take it! British Tank Crew #2: Hold on! We're pushing through! British Tank Crew #1: There on the left! British Tank Crew #2: Take out that cannon! British Tank Crew #2: Good job! Let's open a path for our lads! Move up with the rest of the armor! Stay focused men! British Tank Crew #2: Push on, dammit! We're almost through! Fire at anything that moves! British Tank Crew #1: We're gonna make it! British Tank Crew #2: Shit! Incoming! Artillery! Narrator: Instead of adventure we found fear, and in war the only true equalizer is death. Harlem Hellfighter: Charge! Harlem Hellfighter: Airship coming down! Narrator: We push, they push. Every once in a while, we push hard enough that the light breaks through the clouds... so the world beyond the war glimmers... just out of reach. The war is the world and the world is the war. But behind every gunsight is a human being. We are those people. We are the jaded and we are the naive. We are the honorable and we are the criminal. We are the bound-for-legend and we are the lost-to-history. We are the knights of the sky, the ghosts in the desert, and the rats in the mud. These are our stories.
|
