The 14th (Swansea) (Service) Battalion, the Welsh Regiment, went into the attack with 676 men and after a day of hard fighting had lost almost 400 men killed or wounded before being relieved. Other battalions suffered similar losses. However, by 12 July the wood was effectively cleared of the enemy. The Welsh Division had lost about 4,000 men killed or wounded in the engagement. It would not be used in a massed attack again until 31 July 1917. The wood still stands today, surrounded by farmland. Overgrown shell craters and trenches can still be made out. Other commemorations The war poet Siegfried Sassoon, of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, recorded in his memoirs that he had made a single handed attack on the enemy trenches in Mametz on 4 July 1916. The Welsh artist Christopher Williams painted The Welsh at Mametz Wood at the request of David Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War. Williams visited the scene in November 1916 and later made studies from a soldier supplied for the purpose. The painting is in the collection of National Museum Wales. The poet Robert Graves fought in the battle and described the wood immediately after the battle: The poet and visual artist David Jones, who took part in the battle, wrote a vivid description of the fighting in Mametz Wood in his long poem In Parenthesis (1937), including The Welsh poet Owen Sheers commemorated the battle with his poem Mametz Wood (2000), including the words: This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave, a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm, their skeletons paused mid [[Dance Macabre|dance-macabre]] In 2014, National Theatre Wales performed Mametz, a recreation of the battle in a wood in rural Monmouthshire, scripted by Owen Sheers. In 2016, In Parenthesis, an opera by Iain Bell based on the David Jones poem, was produced by Welsh National Opera. See also Battle of Albert (1916) Capture of Mametz List of World War I memorials and cemeteries in the Somme References Further reading External links Website on the memorial World War I memorials in France Battle of the Somme Monuments and memorials in Somme (department) Outdoor sculptures in France Sculptures of dragons