What was C.S. Lewis’s First World War regiment?

C.S. Lewis served in the Somerset Light Infantry during the First World War.

Lewis received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry and served on the Western Front. He was wounded at the Battle of Arras in April 1918 and later returned to England for treatment.

His wartime experience became an important part of his biography and influenced his early poetry. One of his closest friends, Paddy Moore, was killed in the war; Lewis had made a promise connected with Moore’s mother and sister, which helped shape his later domestic life.

Lewis’s military service is sometimes reduced to the general statement that he fought in the trenches, but the regiment provides the precise identification. He was demobilized after the war and resumed his academic studies at Oxford.