Corporal Clegg: Pink Floyd's Absurdist Critique of War

“Corporal Clegg” is one of the strangest songs on A Saucerful of Secrets, and that strangeness is the whole point. Written by Roger Waters (his first solo composition for the band), it presents a war hero whose experiences are utterly meaningless — he lost a leg in the war, then an eye, and the only thing he gets is a wooden leg, a glass eye, and a medal. The chorus doesn’t even use words: just “moo, moo, moo” over a toy kazoo solo. It’s as if language itself fails to capture the absurdity of military glory.

The military setting is a parody of stiff-upper-lip British patriotism. The song has a march-like rhythm (complete with a terrible, deliberately wobbly kazoo solo that sounds like a child’s toy), and the lyrics describe Corporal Clegg getting his medal while “his legs is never none the wiser.” That last line is typical Waters: the man’s legs are literally absent, but the system still talks about them as if they matter. The nonsense chorus isn’t lazy — it’s a way of saying that the ritual of honouring soldiers has become as hollow as the sounds “moo, moo, moo.”

The song also undercuts any sense of heroism by