Which 1916 battle did J.R.R. Tolkien survive while serving in the British Army?

J.R.R. Tolkien survived the Battle of the Somme in 1916 while serving in the British Army. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers and served as a signals officer with the 11th Service Battalion.

Tolkien went to France in June 1916 and took part in the Somme offensive, which began on 1 July. He served in the trenches before becoming ill with trench fever in October. He was sent back to England for treatment and did not return to front-line service during the war.

The Battle of the Somme was one of the First World War’s largest and bloodiest campaigns. Tolkien’s wartime experiences affected his life and later became part of discussions about possible echoes between the war and his fiction. However, direct one-to-one identification of fictional events with particular battles remains interpretive rather than established fact.