Which battle did J.R.R. Tolkien experience as a British Army officer during World War I?

J.R.R. Tolkien experienced the Battle of the Somme as a British Army officer during World War I.

Tolkien served as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers and went to France in 1916. He took part in the Somme offensive, one of the largest and bloodiest campaigns of the First World War. The battle began on 1 July 1916 and continued until November.

Tolkien served as a signals officer and was later evacuated after contracting trench fever. Most of the other officers in his battalion were killed during the fighting. His wartime experience shaped his understanding of friendship, loss, endurance and landscapes scarred by industrial conflict.

It is too simplistic to map individual fictional characters or events directly onto particular soldiers and battles. Tolkien rejected straightforward one-to-one allegory, but scholars and biographers have often noted echoes of his wartime experience in the emotional atmosphere of The Lord of the Rings.