Listen, someone's screaming in agony- fortunately I speak it fluently
Spike MilliganRead
We come across thirty or so hurried graves with makeshift wooden markers. 'Private Edwards, E.', a number, and that was all. Fourteen days ago he was alive, thinking feeling, hoping... If war was a game of cards, I'd say someone was cheating.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the tragic loss of life in war and the lack of recognition for individual soldiers.
Spike Milligan's quote poignantly illustrates the stark reality of war, emphasizing the impermanence of life through the image of hurried graves marked only by simple identifiers. He expresses a sense of injustice, as if the struggles and hopes of soldiers are disregarded, akin to a game where the rules are unfairly manipulated, leading to their untimely deaths and erasing their identities.
In practice
During a memorial speech for fallen soldiers.
Listen, someone's screaming in agony- fortunately I speak it fluently
In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not. All we know is that, at times, fighting the Russians, we had to remove the piles of enemy bodies from before our trenches, so as to get a clear field of fire against new waves of assault.
In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn't happening now, but I will tell you, there has never been an American army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.
Then somebody suggested I should write about the war, and I said I didn't know anything about the war. I did not understand anything about it. I didn't see how I could write it
In listening to the narratives of the Congolese, I came to terms with the extent to which their bodies had become battlefields.
He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.
The young bloods of the South: sons of planters, lawyers about towns, good billiard-players and sportsmen, men who never did any work and never will... They are splendid riders, first-rate shots and utterly reckless. These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.