Mametz Wood Flashcards
When he went to the Somme battlefield he saw a picture of 20 soldiers buried linked arm in arm
He said it burned into his mind
It clearly had an impact on him
Farmers found
chit of bone, the china plate…
of a shoulder blade
Soft alliteration - gently introducing violence to harder alliteration and sound - violent brutal
Fragile and not as strong as people might make them out to be
the blown/ and broken…
bird’s egg of a skull
Graphic image reminds of blow one’s brains out
Life barely started before it ended contrasted to violence
Fragility
Prosaic plain language
Regular stanzas
Sudden rhyme at the end…
Reflects the daily life that the soldiers are used to just like how the reader is used to the language
Death is something they are used to being surrounded by?
…suggests the time they were suddenly shot
Last stanza
Three elements are combined: people, bones, earth “unearthing”
Earth is free of the bones and the bones are able to be the people they were and finally be able to show the effects of war “only now”
Finally being given recognition where the Welsh division was never given it
Like a wound working…
a foreign body to the surface
The Earth is being farmed for food but it cannot let simply let go of the violent, negative memories without the world seeing
Skeletons paused…
mid dance-macabre
Dance of Death unites everyone, reminding that the glory we have from what we do does not matter after life
