In Parenthesis: in praise of the Somme's forgotten poet

David Jones’s first world war poem was hailed by TS Eliot as a work of genius. So why has its author been largely forgotten?

On 10 July 1916, the 15th battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers attacked Mametz Wood in northern France. Their assault was part of the recently launched Somme offensive, and followed the now familiar method of British attacks over this period. Walking in four lines across a no man’s land of thistles, wild flowers, self-sown mustard and wheat, the men of the 15th slowly advanced into sweeping machine gun fire and artillery. As conscripted soldiers, the strategy behind their offensive was no more sophisticated than that they outnumbered their professional German counterparts three to one. By the time they reached the wood that advantage had already been reduced by a third.

Related: Soldier, poet, painter: how David Jones became Britain’s visionary outsider

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