Christmas 1914, Pt. 3: Peace on Earth (feat. Jocko Willink)

On the third afternoon came a message from the Germans "At midnight, our staff officers visit And we must fire our automatic Pistolen But we will fire higher Nevertheless Please, keep undercover" At 11:00 p.m., Berlin midnight We saw flashes going away Into the air Two days later, an army order came from GHQ To the effect that men found fraternizing with the enemy Would be court marshaled and If found guilty, would suffer the death penalty And again, in that place The very lights soared over no-man's-land at night And bullets cut showers of splinters from trees And, sometimes, human flesh And bone So, hope Sank into the mud again But did not die Despite a withering anew as each poor human unit fell In machine-gun and mortar blast And colossal reverberating Rending of the shells of those four years The years whose truth seems to be incommunicable Sometimes, as one listens to what people say Here in the England a generation died for It seems like Almost pre-war again Can it be That we lack imagination To see the other fellow As ourselves? And Henry Williamson Continued to fight He was eventually Wounded by gas And when he was declared unfit to serve in the army He then volunteered For the Air Force To see if that could get him back to the front But he didn't make it back to the front, luckily Because the war ended The war ended But not before 20 million were wounded And 17 million men were killed Men Just normal men Gone So This Holiday season Please Think of those men and women Around the world in the trenches now Risking life and limb for what they believe in For freedom And think of the civilians Trapped in those hellish places Suffering in the merciless path of war And finally As Henry Williamson asked Let us not lack the imagination to think To think of other men As men Men like ourselves Men like Us Merry Christmas to all And may there be peace On Earth