C.S. Lewis was wounded at the Battle of Arras while serving as a British Army officer in World War I.
Lewis served with the Somerset Light Infantry after training at Oxford. In April 1918, during the German spring offensive, he was wounded by shrapnel at the Battle of Arras in France. One of the officers serving with him, Lieutenant Arthur Greeves, was killed in the same action. Lewis was eventually sent back to England to recover.
The experience affected his health and outlook, and the war also shaped his friendships and later writing. Lewis had entered military service while still a young student, and his wartime experiences became part of the background to his memoir Surprised by Joy.
The event is sometimes confused with the Somme or Passchendaele, two other major First World War battles involving British forces. Lewis’s wound, however, occurred at Arras in 1918, not at either of those battles.