The poem begins with an epigraph taken from Siegfried Sassoon, stating that war is a mere joke, while dreams of peace are real. Then the speaker describes all the ways in which he and his fellow soldiers are intimately friendly with Death. He personifies Death, explaining all the day-to-day annoyances of living and working with him: his smell, his disruptive way of forcing people to spill things. Though these habits cause the soldiers pain and discomfort, they don't surprise them or cause them to avoid Death. He's just a member of their group.
The speaker then launches into a list of some of Death's more violent habits. Death sends bullets, shrapnel, and blades into soldiers. However, the speaker still describes this violence through the metaphor of Death as a mere fellow soldier. He "spits" bullets and "coughs" shrapnel, the way any person might spit or cough. The other soldiers, meanwhile, are still happy. They sing and whistle while Death creates chaos.
Despite all the inconvenience of being around Death, the speaker doesn't think of him as an enemy. That's especially true because soldiers are literally paid to expose themselves to Death and to increase the amount of Death in the world, so it wouldn't make sense for them to think of themselves as anti-death. In fact, the soldiers imagine future soldiers, who will brag that they're fighting against Death, supporting humans instead of nations. The soldiers laugh at these imagined soldiers, recognizing that their ideal of war is absurd.
