At which battle did J.R.R. Tolkien serve during the First World War?

J.R.R. Tolkien served during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War.

Tolkien was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers in 1915. He went to France in June 1916 and took part in the Somme offensive, one of the war’s largest and bloodiest campaigns.

He served as a signals officer and became ill with trench fever after several months. He was sent back to England in October 1916, and the illness prevented his return to active service in France.

The war profoundly affected Tolkien’s generation and his personal life. Several close school friends were killed, and later readers have examined possible echoes of wartime experience in his stories. Tolkien nevertheless resisted simple one-to-one interpretations of Middle-earth as an allegory of the First World War.