Swinging the Lead
Swinging the Lead - meaning Summary
Symptoms Blamed on Lead
This short, comic-ironical poem follows a soldier describing symptoms, exhaustion and the burden of ammunition to medical and military figures. Each reply reduces his complaints to a single explanation: the repeated refrain "That's Lead!"
—a wry double meaning that points to both physical weight and the presence of bullets (and danger) in wartime life. The tone mixes gallows humor with the everyday hardships of soldiers in World War I.
Said the soldier to the Surgeon, "I've got noises in me head And a kind o' filled up feeling after every time I'm fed; I can sleep all night on picket, but I can't sleep in my bed". And the Surgeon said, "That's Lead!" Said the soldier to the Surgeon, "Do you think they'll send me back? For I really ain't adapted to be carrying a pack Though I've humped a case of whisky half a mile upon my back". And the Surgeon said, "That's Lead!" "And my legs have swelled up cruel, I can hardly walk at all, Bur when the Taubes come over you should see me start to crawl; When we're sprinting for the dugout, I can easy beat 'em all". And the Surgeon said, "That's Lead!" So they sent him to the trenches where he landed safe and sound, And he drew his ammunition, just about two fifty round: "Oh Sergeant, what's this heavy stuff I've got to hump around?" And the Sergeant said, "That's Lead!"
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