Mametz Wood

• "the wasted young"


  the lives of the soldiers were lost too soon, they were too young to die
• "the china plate of a shoulder blade"


  Metaphor shows image of fragility and vulnerability. Also shown through plosive alliteration. Highlights the delicate beauty of human life.
• "broken bird's egg of a skull,"


  Metaphor suggests that the soldiers had only just begun their lives when they died, they haven't had the chance to fly yet. It also highlights death as a natural process. The conflict between the image of a young bird and natural death suggests that Sheers is trying to convey that while death is natural, the death of these soldiers went against nature and shouldn't have happened.
• "they were told to walk, not run,"


  Reminds the reader of when they were a child, paradox of men being asked to live their lives for a cause yet are infantilised by those who direct them.
• "nesting machine guns"


  War is normalised

  Nature is perverted by human activity
• the rhyming couplet "sung" and "tongues" adds to the idea of peace and harmony returning as the soldiers' lives and sacrifice is remembered