Which battle did J.R.R. Tolkien experience as a British Army officer in 1916?

J.R.R. Tolkien experienced the Battle of the Somme as a British Army officer in 1916.

Tolkien served in the Lancashire Fusiliers during the First World War and trained as a signals officer. He was sent to France in June 1916, shortly before the Somme offensive began on 1 July. He served at the Battle of the Somme and later developed trench fever.

His wartime experience is often discussed alongside the landscapes, fellowship, loss, and endurance found in his fiction. However, Tolkien resisted simple one-to-one interpretations of Middle-earth as an allegory of the First World War. His personal experiences informed his imagination without reducing the books to a direct war memoir.

The Battle of Verdun was also a major 1916 battle, but it was fought primarily on the French front and is not the engagement associated with Tolkien’s service. Passchendaele belongs to 1917.