This is Jocco podcast number 26 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink.

O for a voice like thunder and a tongue to drown the throat of war.

When the senses are shaken and the soul is driven to madness, who can stand?

When the souls of the oppressed fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?

When the whirlwind of fury comes from the throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance drive the nations together, who can stand?

When sin claps his broad wings over the battle and sails rejoicing in the flood of death.

When souls are torn to everlasting fire and fiends of hell rejoice upon the slain.

O who can stand? Good evening Echo. Good evening. That right there is a little excerpt of a poem that I have written.

A poem by a guy named William Blake. And it paints war as something so powerful, so evil.

Something superhuman.

And the full poem is really a statement against a warning as it goes on.

It's not that much longer, but it blames war on the politicians and on the kings and on the nobles.

And it blames war on the religious leaders. But he asks that question over and over again. Who can stand?

And I can actually answer that question.

And I've seen who can stand. I've seen people break, but I have seen many brave men and women on the battlefield stand.

Stand against fear and death and stand against evil.

Stand as sin claps his broad wings over the battle and sails rejoicing in the flood of death.

And that's a William Blake. Those are his words, but he's writing that in the late 1700s and early 1800s. He had no idea how bad war would get.

And I'm not saying war is worse in terms of individual horror, but in terms of scale, it can't be denied. I mean World War I and World War II, the scale of horror, it would be incomprehensible to a man from Blake's time. He just couldn't understand it.

So let's go to June 6th, 1944, as the demon spread his wings over the beaches of Normandy and men stood against his evil.

The English cockson tried to drop the ramp a couple hundred feet from the shore when the sergeant ordered. Take us all the way in.

Just then, machine guns opened up and bullets tore through the wooden sides of the landing craft.

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