In which branch of the British Army did J.R.R. Tolkien serve during World War I?

J.R.R. Tolkien served in the Lancashire Fusiliers during World War I.

Tolkien received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers in 1915. He was sent to France in 1916 and took part in the Battle of the Somme. His wartime service exposed him to the intense conditions of trench warfare and to the loss of many fellow soldiers.

Tolkien became ill with trench fever and was returned to England later in 1916. He spent much of the remainder of the war recovering or serving in positions connected with training and administration. His wartime experience is an important part of his biography.

Readers sometimes identify Tolkien’s fiction too directly with a single historical event. Tolkien resisted simple allegorical readings, but scholars and biographers do recognize that war, bereavement, landscapes, and industrial destruction formed part of the experiences surrounding his creative work.