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I Am the Messenger

Mick Harvey & Christopher Richard Barker
Language: English


Mick Harvey & Christopher Richard Barker


I am the messenger
I am the messenger
I am the messenger
 
Across the silent down, weeping with the dew;
Across the sleeping town, waking but a few;
Across the quiet farm, rousing drowsy lark;
Across the old school playing fields, across the misty park
 
Across the trees, across the land, across all that's high and low
I harvest, reap and then I keep before I slink below
I drain away vitality, then tug you underground;
Naked, cold, forgotten; entombed without a sound.

I am the messenger
I am the messenger
I am the messenger

“I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on forever. Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls.” Paul Nash, artist

“We're telling lies; we know we're telling lies; we don't tell the public the truth, that we're losing more officers than the Germans, and that it's impossible to get through on the Western Front.” Lord Rothermere, newspaper owner

“Two armies that fight each other is like one large army that commits suicide.” ― French soldier Henri Barbusse, in his novel "Le Feu", 1915

“In no circumstances whatever will the expression 'shell-shock' be used verbally or be recorded in any regimental or other casualty report, or in any hospital or other medical document.” ― British army General Routine Order No. 2384, issued on 7 June 1917 in France.

“Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless.” ― American president Woodrow Wilson.

“We are within measurable, or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon.” ― British Prime Minister Henry Asquith, one week before the war started.

“Never had the machine-gunners such straightforward work to do nor done it so unceasingly.” ― German Regimental Diarist at the Battle of Loos where the Allies suffered over 80% losses.

“Independent thinking is not encouraged in a professional Army. It is a form of mutiny. Obedience is the supreme virtue.” ― British Prime Minister Lloyd George in his 'War Memoirs'

“As a result of continuous work with these highly toxic substances, our minds were so numbed that we no longer had any scruples about the whole thing.” ― Otto Hahn, German scientist and co-inventor of war gas.

“Dearest Mother, No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.” ― Wilfred Owen, in a letter to his mother, January 1917

The abode of madness
The abode of madness
The abode of madness

The abode...the abode….the abode
The abode….of madness...

I am the m-m-m-m-messenger!
I am the m-m-m-m-messenger!
I am the m-m-m-m-messenger!



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