What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s wartime battalion in the British Army?

J.R.R. Tolkien served in the 11th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, during the First World War.

Tolkien was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1915 after studying at Oxford. He trained with the Lancashire Fusiliers and went to France in June 1916. His battalion took part in the Battle of the Somme, one of the war’s largest and most costly campaigns.

Tolkien became ill with trench fever and was sent back to England in October 1916. He spent much of the remainder of the war recovering and was not medically fit to return to active service.

Readers often look for one-to-one historical equivalents between Tolkien’s battles and scenes in Middle-earth. Tolkien resisted simple allegorical readings, but his wartime experiences inevitably formed part of the background to his understanding of friendship, loss, endurance, and industrialized conflict.