Poetry Across Time
Conflict
Introduce
Mametz Wood
By Owen Sheers
Establish
How is war represented in this image?
Discuss/Identify
Mametz Wood
Mametz Wood was the objective of the 38th (Welsh) Division
during the First Battle of the Somme. The Welsh Regiment was
made up of amateur soldiers, full of enthusiasm and courage, who
were ordered to attack the heavily fortified German position
between 7 July and 12 July 1916. The attack of the 7 July failed
to reach the wood before the men were halted by machine gun
fire. Further attacks by the 17th Division on 8 July failed to
improve the position due to exposed and upwardly sloping land.
Infuriated by what he saw as a distinct lack of 'push', Sir Douglas
Haig and Henry Rawlinson visited the HQ of the Welsh Division to
make their displeasure known. Major General Ivor Philipps, officer
commanding the Welsh Division, was relieved of his command and
control of the Division was passed to Major General Watts who
was informed to use it 'as he saw fit'.
On the 10 July 1916, the operational order was blunt: the Division
would attack the wood with the aim of 'capturing the whole of it'.
Despite heavy casualties, the fringe of the wood was soon reached
and some bayonet fighting took place before the wood was
entered and a number of German machine guns silenced. Fighting
in the wood was fierce with the Germans giving ground stubbornly.
The 14th Welsh (Swansea) Battalion went into the attack with
676 men and after a day of fighting had lost almost 400 men
killed or wounded before being relieved. Other battalions
suffered similar losses. However, by 12 July the wood was
effectively cleared of the enemy. The Welsh Division had lost
about 4,000 men killed or wounded in this searing engagement. It
was not be used in a massed attack again until 31 July 1917.
The Welsh Division was never given real recognition for its
achievement. There was even an accusation that the division had
failed to advance with enough spirit - the men were accused of
cowardice.
It was an accusation that was later withdrawn but it left a sour
taste in the mouths of many of the men who had seen comrades
killed and mutilated in one of the most bloody battles of the whole
war.
Establish - Link to further information
Aftermath
It was full of dead Prussian
Guards, big men, and dead Royal
Welch Fusiliers and South Wales
Borderers, little men. Not a single
tree in the wood remained
unbroken.
Rupert Graves
Establish
Mametz Wood
By Owen Sheers
Owen Sheers was born in 1974 in Fiji. Skirrid Hill, where this
poem was first published, was described as a 'beautifully
elegiac collection' by the Guardian. Many of his poems are
tinged with a reflective sadness, but he denies that he is a
miserabilist. As a poet, he is drawn to free verse and claims
to be "quite an instinctive writer, I do a lot of it on the ear"
whilst his readings produce a quiet naturalism that keeps the
subjects and narratives central.
"I really wrote this because while I was there they uncovered
a shallow grave of twenty Allied soldiers who had been buried
very very quickly but whoever had buried them had taken the
time to actually link their arms, arm-in-arm, and when I saw a
photograph of this grave I just knew that it was one of those
images that had burned itself onto my mind and I knew that I
would want to write about it eventually. As it happens I did,
but the poem took a long time to surface very much in the
same way that those elements of the battle are still surfacing
through the fields eighty-five years later."
Poet's Background and Ideas
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.
Poet Visits the Wood
Mametz Wood
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,
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.
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.
Poem
Mametz Wood
Referring
For years afterwards the farmers found them to?
the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades
Personification
as they tended the land back into itself.
Suggests?
Why? A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,
Meanings?
the relic of a finger, the blown
Natural image to
and broken bird’s egg of a skull,
emphasise?
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.
Implications?
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.
Imagery?
Reminds us...
This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm, Suggests?
their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre
Significance?
Medieval dance of death
in boots that outlasted them,
Imagery?
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.
Emphasis
Poem
Continuing with bird
imagery
Endings:
As if the notes they had sung
have only now, with this unearthing,
slipped from their absent tongues.
Reflection...
* What is the significance of the
word 'sung' here?
* How does this link to the ideas
of the WW1 poets?
Explain your ideas.
Skill: Wider Reading
Songs of the WW1 Soldier...
British soldiers sang to keep their spirits up, whenever they
travelled long distances or wanted to think of home. They sang ‘Oh!
Oh! Oh! What a lovely war!’, ‘When this bloody war is over, ‘Take me
back to dear old Blighty’ and ‘Pack up your troubles in your ol’ kit bag’.
1
2
3
How does this link to the ideas of the poem?
Establish/Discuss
Exploring imagery in the text:
'the china plate of a shoulder blade'
What is the
poet trying to
establish?
'the blown and broken bird's egg of a skull'
'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'
Task: Individual Investigation
Danse Macabre
The Dance of Death is a late-medieval allegory on the universality of
death: no matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all.
The remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain the
glories of earthly life are.
Establish - Ideas of poet
Odd One Out?
1. If you wanted to argue that the poem emphasises
the violence of the soldiers’ deaths, which quotation
would not be useful?
a. ‘the blown/and broken bird’s egg of a skull’
b. ‘nesting machine guns’
c. ‘their jaws, those that have them, dropped open’
2. If you wanted to argue that the poem creates a sense of
pathos, which quotation would not be useful?
a. ‘the wasted young’
b. ‘a broken mosaic of bone’
c. ‘in boots that outlasted them’
3. If you wanted to argue that the poem seems critical of the way
the battle was managed, which quotation would not be useful?
a. ‘the wasted young’
b. ‘they were told to walk, not run
c. ‘linked arm in arm’
4. If you want to argue that the poem portrays war as an offence
against nature, which quotation would not be useful?
a. ‘tended the land back into itself’
b. ‘the relic of a finger’
c. ‘like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the
skin’
Odd One Out
Look at the images below:
Can you find the quotation/idea
that they refer to?
Task
Create a pictoral presentation of the poem.
Think carefully about the ideas and imagery contained within.
Extension: IT Task
Question Time!
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
How does the poet feel about the way
in which the soldiers died?
Who do you think buried the skeletons
and why might they have arranged them in this way?
Why does the poet use a lot of bird imagery in his poem?
Why does the poet write in third person?
What is the earth personified as?
Quick Questions
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to
roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England
given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
RUPERT BROOKE
Additional
A Dead Boche
To you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
”War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
ROBERT GRAVES
Additional
Links:
Information about the battle of Mametz Wood:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/waleshistory/2010/11/
battle_of_mametz_woods.html
Poet reads poem:
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/
singlePoem.do?poemId=6005
Poet talks about poem:
http://www.sheerpoetry.co.uk/gcse/owen-sheers/
mametz-wood
A teacher analysis of poem:
http://www.helpmewithenglish.co.uk/page_2111252.html
Vintage audio archive of sons sung by WW1 soldiers:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/post1919.htm
Links and References