In the poem Mametz Wood, Owen Sheers explores ideas about conflict. Write about the ways in which Sheers presents conflict in this poem.

Sheers presents conflict through the juxtaposition of images of nature and unnatural warcraft in Mametz Wood. In the second Stanza, Sheers describes the remnants of the soldiers' bodies through the metaphor 'broken bird's egg of a skull'. The use of this metaphor is the first instance of Sheers juxtaposing delicate, beautiful elements of nature to the unnatural destruction caused by war. Sheers uses this metaphor to highlight that the soldiers are far more fragile than we have been led to believe, causing the reader to feel sympathy for them as their natural, easily-broken bodies are destroyed by war. Sheers uses alliteration through the plosive 'b' sounds in 'broken bird's egg', perhaps to mimic the noise of gunfire, helping the reader to better imagine the horror of war.  This juxtaposition continues in the second stanza, when Sheers refers to the 'nesting machine guns' in the wood. The use of the verb 'nesting' has connotations of birds in the forest, causing the reader to imagine the jarring, juxtaposed image of the unnatural machine guns nested in the trees as though they are part of the natural landscape. Sheers is perhaps suggesting that conflict has become so deeply entrenched in this environment that it has become a natural part of it. However, the morbid tone of the poem undermines this suggestion, highlighting that although the guns may have now formed part of the landscape, they are not natural or welcome in the woodland, much like the soldiers' 'foreign bodies' in the soil.