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- The poem describes the battle field in modern times, with soldier’s bodies being uncovered by farmers tending the land.
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- The poem opens with the phrase “For years afterwards…”, which suggests that the horror of war, and this particular tragedy still affects us.
- The language, such as “china plate”, “broken bird’s egg of a skull”, the broken “mosaic of bone” used suggests that the soldiers were vulnerable and fragile.
- The poem’s stanzas alternate between ideas to do with the land, “the earth stands sentinel” and imagery to do with the bones of the dead soldiers. The earth is a witness to the tragedy.
- The imagery evokes the horror of war. The “socketed heads tilted back at an angle” brutally visualises the moment the men were shot and their screams of pain.
- Final words – “their absent tongues”, suggests that the soldiers have finally found a voice. The final stanza combines both elements of the alternating stanzas and suggests that the poem is about offering redemption or justice, both for the dead and the land.
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- The poem’s structure is in regular three-line stanzas almost reflecting the neat linear pattern of a ploughed field.
- However, at times the length of the lines change, with longer lines breaking up the neat form.
- This disrupted pattern could reflect the ‘chits of bone’ rising out of the ground and disrupting our attempts to forget the past.
- The first part of the poem focuses on the land itself before the focus shifts to the bones and dead soldiers in the final stanzas.
- The concluding stanza brings all the elements together.
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- Mametz Wood was one of the bloodiest battles of World War One. As part of the first Battle of the Somme in 1916, soldiers of the Welsh division were ordered to take Mametz Wood, the largest area of trees on the battlefield.
- The 38th Welsh Division lost 4,000 men during the attack which lasted five days.
- The poet Owen Sheers grew up in Wales and wrote the poem in 2005 as he felt their bravery and sacrifice was never really acknowledged.
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