Another year, another campaign season. I’m making another effort to start and sustain a blog and, to speed me on my way — at least content-wise, while I struggle with the latest technical trivia of WordPress, Thesis, html, php, etc. – I’m reposting some material from the past. So it’s back on the warpath to the call of an old theme – Once more unto the breach:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our Expat dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of soju kimchi breath blows in our faces,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
…
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest weigukin.
…
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in darun nara, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
…
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Henry V, Act III (With apologies to the Bard).
“Once more unto the breach” is the speech Henry gives to rally his men at the Battle of Hafleur (september 22, 1415), where the English made their initial landing in France in Henry’s undertaking to reclaim the historical lands of the English throne in France and lit the fuse on The Hundred Years War. That’s (a young) Laurence Olivier as Henry V in the 1944 film of eponymous title; here’s a clip from the movie:
More famous today, in no small part because of its play in the oft-rerun series The Band of Brothers, is Henry’s speech at the Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415), which took place on a small plain between the woods on either side where were located the towns of Agincourt and Tramecourt – and the companies of English and Welsh longbowmen who treated the charging French knights to the sort of enfilading fire from both flanks that the British were to experience centuries later in Crimea during The Charge of the Light Brigade:
He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’ Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember, with advantages, What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words- Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester- Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day
Kenneth Branagh did a relatively good job of it in his rendition of Henry V:
– better to my taste anyway than Laurence Olivier’s stylization of it:
.
The most moving version, though, is that delivered not by an actor but men who did live another of those days (and more than a few more) to see old age and honor the memory of their comrades (from Band of Brothers):
