Glenn Miller in the Mines Dark Room

There's constant references in this to what could happen to these men it's almost like the speaker can't get the thoughts of death out of his head but laid out on lockers some get why laid and lice stiff both sound like descriptions of corpses running off films in the mines dark room. I wonder if soupy was a sort of a hip term to use in world war two because I don't know if you're familiar with Glenn Miller the famous American big band leader who was lost in action he's playing went down  and nobody knows quite what happened to him.