[Intro — wind drone, mechanical heartbeat, blade on iron] [spoken, flat, close] February, nineteen forty-five. Rhineland mud. The first twenty. They called it the Zebra Mission. [radio — thin, filtered, distant] Observer to Fireball. Hold your position on the street. We are recording. [Verse 1] Elsdorf streets are crushed to gray, backlit shadows in the dying day. Coal fire burning at our back — we were the brightest thing on that black. Thirty seconds on the clock. Mantlet cracked against the block. [Chorus — low unison gang chant, blade on the beat] Through the mud, through the smoke, we brought the gun they said would come. Hold the breech. Clear the bore. Forty-six tons and a frozen door. [radio — thin, filtered, distant] Fireball, report. Fireball. Fireball, report. [Verse 2 — dry, close, cold] Two men never left the turret ring. Three came out and could not hear a thing. And the one that hit us backed into the stone of the town it came to hold — threw a track, and the crew walked home. [Verse 3] Ninety millimeters in a cramped steel room, powder smoke stinging through the winter gloom. General Barnes is reading what the spalling yields, measuring the thickness on the shattered fields. They put a tape across the hole and wrote the number down. [radio — thin, filtered, distant] Penetration confirmed. Mark the plate. Log the number and move on. [Chorus — low unison gang chant, blade on the beat] Through the mud, through the smoke, we brought the gun they said would come. Hold the breech. Clear the bore. Forty-six tons and a frozen door. [Outro — distant cathedral bells over sub-bass drone] [spoken, flat, close] Cologne, March sixth. The cathedral is still standing. Back on the line, March seventh. The tracks hold.
