Where was C.S. Lewis wounded while serving in World War I?

C.S. Lewis was wounded during the Battle of Arras in World War I.

Lewis served as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry. He fought on the Western Front during the 1917 Battle of Arras and was wounded by shrapnel in April of that year. His service ended after the injury, and he returned to England to recover.

The experience of trench warfare and the deaths of friends influenced Lewis’s later reflections on suffering, grief, and belief. He did not treat his war service as a decorative episode in his biography; it formed part of the background to his mature intellectual and spiritual development.

The battle is sometimes confused with other major engagements of the First World War, including the Somme and Passchendaele. Lewis was not wounded at those battles. After recovering, he resumed his studies and eventually built his career as an Oxford scholar and writer.