is a phrase that i use a lot. generally, whenever i have taken a break from a task that i do not like, and am now returning to it.
i have always imagined it as something a general might shout to the men of his division in world war 1, commanding them to climb out of the trench and run head first across no-man's-land, in a desperate attempt to gain back some ground. the only way forward, the only option. no matter how many get gunned down by machine guns, one man might make it through and clear a section of the enemy's trench.
as it turns out, i have been referencing shakespeare for many years without knowing it. the line is from shakespeare's henry v, in which king henry, having blown a hole in the fortifications of the french, commands his men to attack the 'breach':
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close up the wall with our English dead."
it's the same fucking thing. it's a do-or-die-trying, it's the same kind of situation, separated by 500 years. i think it's pretty incredible that those five words are so evocative that the scene i imagine is, in base meaning, the same as the one that it actually describes.