What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s World War I battalion?

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

Tolkien received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers in 1915 after studying at Oxford. He went to France in June 1916 and took part in the Battle of the Somme. His wartime service exposed him to the conditions of trench warfare and to the loss of many close school friends.

In October 1916, Tolkien was sent home after contracting trench fever, a louse-borne illness. He spent the rest of the war in England, where he continued recovering and began developing early stories connected with what later became his mythology.

Readers sometimes connect particular fictional episodes directly to individual battlefield events, but Tolkien generally resisted simple one-to-one allegorical interpretations. The war nevertheless formed an important part of his life and affected his generation’s experience of friendship, grief, industrial conflict, and survival.