1. Mametz Wood
Owen Sheers
Owen Sheers was
born in 1974 in Fiji
but grew up in
Abergavenny in South
Wales. As well as
poetry, he has worked
in theatre and
television, and was
Writer in Residence
for The Wordsworth
Trust in 2OO4.
The poem is about farmers in France in the
present finding bones and skeletons in their
fields when they plough the land. The
skeletons and bones are from soldiers who
died during the First World War. The poem
switches between describing their death in
battle and the grisly discovery of their
skeletons in the present.
‘Mametz Wood’ was featured as the Saturday
poem in The Guardian in 2005 and is included in
Sheers’ second collection of poetry, Skirrid Hill.
Skirrid derives from a word meaning divorce or
separation and many of the poems in the
collection are concerned with loss. The volume has
been described as ‘elegaic’, a word that certainly
applies to ‘Mametz Wood’.
The battle of Mametz
Wood was a real event
that took place in July
1916, part of the First
Battle of the Somme.
The 38th
Welsh Division
was trying to take a
heavily fortified wooded
area on high ground.
German forces were well
equipped with machine
guns and the attacking
soldiers had to approach
across exposed,
upwardly sloping land.
The 38th
Welsh suffered
heavy losses (almost
4000), including some to
what is now called
‘friendly fire’.
Dance macabre or ‘Dance of
Death’ was a theme of much
medieval poetry and art. It depicts
a skeleton (Death) leading all
ranks of people (from the highest
to the lowest) to their graves. It
symbolises the inevitability of
death for all, and the futility of
earthly rank and material
possessions. Its appearance in
religious imagery was meant to
urge viewers to reflect on the
state of their souls.
You should compare this poem
with other poems about the same
themes: reality of battles: 'Charge
of the Light Brigade', 'Bayonet
Charge1
; nature: 'The Falling
Leaves'; death: 'Out of the Blue’
.
2. I wrote ‘Mametz Wood’ after visiting the site of a WWI battlefield on the Somme in Northern France.
I’d gone to Mametz on the 85th anniversary of the battle that had happened there in 1916 to make a short film
about two Welsh writers who’d written about their experiences of fighting at Mametz.
The writers were David Jones and Llewelyn Wyn Griffith, and although they both survived the battle of Mametz
Wood, around 4,000 men of the 38th Welsh Division did not. The attacking Welsh soldiers had to advance
uphill, over open ground, into sweeping ‘hip and thigh’ machine gun fire. On more than one occasion they
advanced into their own creeping artillery barrage. The fighting was brutal and, once in the wood, often at close
quarters.
Walking over that same ground, now a ploughed field, 85 years later I was struck by how remnants of the battle
– strips of barbed wire, shells, fragments of bone, were still rising to the surface. It was as if the earth under my
feet that was now being peacefully tilled for food could not help but remember its violent past and the lives that
had sunk away into it. Entering the wood, a ‘memory’ of the battle was still evident there too. Although there
was a thick undergrowth of trailing ivy and brambles, it undulated through deep shell holes. My knowledge of
what had caused those holes in the ground and of what had happened among those trees stood in strange
juxtaposition to the Summer calmness of the wood itself; the dappled sunlight, the scent of wild garlic, the
birdsong filtering down from the higher branches.
While I was in France visiting Mametz Wood I read a newspaper article about a shallow war grave that had
been uncovered during the building of a car factory nearby. The newspaper carried a photograph of this grave
which I will never forget. There were twenty skeletons lying in it in various states of completeness, some still
wearing rotten boots, others without. Each skeleton lay in its own position of death, but all of them were linked,
arm in arm. It was a strange, touching, disturbing photograph and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to write a
poem about Mametz; about how the resonance of that battle was still being remembered in the soil over which it
was fought.
The poem I’d eventually write, much like the remnants of the fighting at Mametz, took a long time to surface
into the form it now takes in the book 'Skirrid Hill'.
I’m not sure how much more I will say about the poem itself as I believe a poem’s meaning should be found in
the reading of it, not in an explanation of how it was written. What I will say is that my choices of image,
vocabulary, focus were all guided by those few moments of standing in that Summer wood, experiencing the
strange juxtaposition of its natural present against its all too unnatural past. And, of course, by the photograph of
that grave and the desire it left me with to give voice to those silent, unknown skeletons, most of whom would
have been younger than I was then, 26 years old, when they were killed.
(http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=6005)
4. For years afterwards the farmers found them –
the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades
as they tended the land back into itself.
A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,
the relic of a finger, the blown
and broken bird’s egg of a skull,
For many years farmers have ploughed up bones
from soldiers buried in a field near Mametz Wood.
On one particular day a grave is discovered where
20 soldiers have been buried. The skeletons still
reveal their arms linked together, as though
dancing.
The 21 lines of the
poem, although in one
long stanza, divide into
four sections. The first
nine lines describe how
the farmers have been
unearthing pieces of
bone for many years.
Sheers’ use of emotive words and
phrases such as ‘wasted young’
demonstrates his feelings about
the futility of war.
Sheers describes the
fragments of bone in moving
metaphors such as ‘the china
plate of a shoulder blade’
makes the piece of bone
sound delicate and precious
and ‘the relic of a finger’
although ‘relic’ can mean
anything left when the rest
has decayed, it also refers to
something belonging to a
saint, and is considered holy
‘the blown/and broken bird’s
egg of a skull’ gives a fragile
picture of the empty remains
of a young man’s head .
A chit is a small piece of
paper. A relic an object
associated with the
past, with a saint or
remains of a corpse
5. all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white
across this field where they were told to walk, not run,
towards the wood and its nesting machine guns.
And even now the earth stands sentinel,
reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened
like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin.
The tenth, eleventh and
twelfth lines could stand
alone. The poet’s voice is
heard here, reflecting on
the way discoveries are
still being made that bring
the past into the present.
These three lines introduce
the new discovery of the
shared grave, which is
described in the next six
lines.
Sheers further describes the fragments of bone in
moving metaphors ‘nesting machine guns’ (l. 9)
continues the bird image. The collective noun for a
group of machine guns, hidden from view, is a ‘nest’.
What other ideas about the machine guns does the
word ‘nesting’ give?
The simile describing the earth ‘like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the
skin’ in line 2 is very effective. Think about the way a splinter is eventually pushed out of
your skin. The words ‘foreign body’ are cleverly ambiguous, not only describing something
introduced from the outside, but also referring to the Welsh soldiers who have died while
fighting on foreign soil. The French soil is personified. Recognising its English or Welsh
occupants, it seems to have slowly lifted the skeletons upwards so they can be discovered
in peacetime. Sheers seems to have great respect for the earth, which on line 10 ‘stands
sentinel’ as though it is keeping watch over its dead.
A sentinel is another
name for a guard or
sentry. This creates
powerful imagery and
personifies ‘the earth’.
6. This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm,
their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre
in boots that outlasted them,
their socketed heads tilted back at an angle
and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open.
As if the notes they had sung
have only now, with this unearthing,
slipped from their absent tongues.
The final three lines reintroduce Sheers’ feelings about the waste of young vigorous
life that is the result of war. He finishes the poem with the observation that ‘only now’,
when dug up after many years, do the 20 ‘wasted young’ get the chance to complain
about the way their lives were sacrificed. Although in free verse, there are two
examples of half-rhyme in the poem. Lines 8 and 9 close the first section, almost like a
rhyming couplet (run, guns) and lines 19 and 21 end with ‘sung’ and ‘tongues’ to give a
feeling of finality to the poem.
Sheers again uses
emotive phrases to
emphasise the futility of
war. Earlier in the
poem, the dead are
‘wasted young’ and now
their ‘absent tongues’
suggests that they can’t
speak for themselves.
The description is
very visual. Lines 14–
16 describe the way
the skeletons seem to
be linking arms in a
dance, and line 16 is a
poignant reminder
that once they were
alive and wearing the
boots to trudge
through the mud, the
fields and the forests.
It is particularly ironic that the boots have outlived the
wearers. Even the empty skulls — ‘their socketed
heads’ — are ‘tilted back at an angle/and their jaws…
dropped open’. We can see the photo in our minds in
all its distressing detail and further emphasises the
horror the soldiers faced.
Sheers further describes the
fragments of bone in moving
metaphors ‘a broken mosaic of
bone’ (l. 14) makes a design of
the skeletons linked together;
they fit together like a jigsaw;
the whole picture tells a very
different story from that of the
individual pieces. The ‘broken’
mosaic could suggest the
broken remains of different
bones colliding together.
A mosaic is a design
made of small pieces
of coloured stone or
glass.
7. This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm,
their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre
in boots that outlasted them,
their socketed heads tilted back at an angle
and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open.
As if the notes they had sung
have only now, with this unearthing,
slipped from their absent tongues.
The final three lines reintroduce Sheers’ feelings about the waste of young vigorous
life that is the result of war. He finishes the poem with the observation that ‘only now’,
when dug up after many years, do the 20 ‘wasted young’ get the chance to complain
about the way their lives were sacrificed. Although in free verse, there are two
examples of half-rhyme in the poem. Lines 8 and 9 close the first section, almost like a
rhyming couplet (run, guns) and lines 19 and 21 end with ‘sung’ and ‘tongues’ to give a
feeling of finality to the poem.
Sheers again uses
emotive phrases to
emphasise the futility of
war. Earlier in the
poem, the dead are
‘wasted young’ and now
their ‘absent tongues’
suggests that they can’t
speak for themselves.
The description is
very visual. Lines 14–
16 describe the way
the skeletons seem to
be linking arms in a
dance, and line 16 is a
poignant reminder
that once they were
alive and wearing the
boots to trudge
through the mud, the
fields and the forests.
It is particularly ironic that the boots have outlived the
wearers. Even the empty skulls — ‘their socketed
heads’ — are ‘tilted back at an angle/and their jaws…
dropped open’. We can see the photo in our minds in
all its distressing detail and further emphasises the
horror the soldiers faced.
Sheers further describes the
fragments of bone in moving
metaphors ‘a broken mosaic of
bone’ (l. 14) makes a design of
the skeletons linked together;
they fit together like a jigsaw;
the whole picture tells a very
different story from that of the
individual pieces. The ‘broken’
mosaic could suggest the
broken remains of different
bones colliding together.
A mosaic is a design
made of small pieces
of coloured stone or
glass.
