At which First World War battle did J.R.R. Tolkien serve as a signals officer?

J.R.R. Tolkien served as a signals officer during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War.

Tolkien joined the British Army and was commissioned into the Lancashire Fusiliers. In 1916 he went to France as a second lieutenant and served in the Somme campaign, one of the war’s largest and bloodiest offensives.

He developed trench fever and was sent back to England in October 1916. The illness prevented his return to the front, and he spent much of the remainder of the war recovering or serving in domestic postings.

The Somme is often discussed in connection with the dark atmosphere and wartime experience visible in Tolkien’s writing. It is too simplistic, however, to treat individual Middle-earth scenes as direct allegories of the battle. Tolkien repeatedly resisted one-to-one allegorical readings of his stories.