Taking the Hill

Taking the Hill

We did not take it clean and we did not take it slow,
We took it like a mudslide with nowhere left to go,
Every boot was sliding and every lung was burning through,
But the top of that incline was the only thing we knew.

Taking the hill, taking the hill,
Not because we could but because we had the will,
Every ridge that slowed us down just pushed us harder up,
Taking the hill until the last man fills his cup.

Taking the hill in the dead of the assault,
Breathing blood and dirt and every previous fault,
They said hold your position, we held the summit line,
Taking the hill because the high ground’s always mine.

The defenders had advantage, had the angles and the drop,
But advantage means exactly nothing when you do not stop,
We were louder than their confidence and faster than their fear,
And the last hundred feet was ours before they knew we were near.

There’s a mathematics to it, willingness outranks terrain,
There’s a physics to the pushing
where the hunger beats the strain,
Every hill is just a question and the answer’s in your legs,
And the man who’s made his peace with pain is way beyond all begs.

We planted something at the top to say that we had been,
Not for anyone who’d follow but for everyone who’d seen,
That a body in forward motion with a purpose and a roar,
Is the oldest kind of argument that nobody can ignore.