Question ?How does Sheers present imagery of death and destruction in “Mametz Wood”? Response In the first stanza, Sheers presents his feelings towards the war by writing “the wasted young, turning up under plough blades”. This suggests that the war wasted lives of innocent young people, and also tells us how easily forgotten they were individually. People remember that others died fighting for them but individually many soldiers were not found or not identified. Sheers creates an image of soldiers/people being torn and mangled up by farming equipment. “turning up under plough blades” This image shows us the unidentified soldiers being ripped from the earth they were resting in, to finally be uncovered , something which should of happened a long time ago. He then goes on to say “as they tended the land back into itself.” This creates an image of the earth retreating from war hiding away to recover from the wounds it suffered. Here Sheers tries to show us that from war -which is a manmade action- not only do people suffer and get hurt, but it also has a negative scarring impact on nature itself. This shows a conflict between past and present and how the past still leaves its scars on the present and future of the earth. Sheers takes interest in nature and what we as a society do that has an impact on it. “A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade.” Here in Stanza 2 Sheers uses a metaphor to create an image of how delicate human life is and how easily it can be broken/ taken away. He uses another metaphor in this stanza to repeat the same image, “the blown and broken bird’s egg of a skull.” In this metaphor Sheers uses alliteration of the letter ‘b’ this intensifies the description and helps create an even more powerful image of fragility. Sheers echoes the alliteration of the previous stanza in the phrase “breaking blue in white,” describing the colours of the fragments that are pushing t