Which battle did J.R.R. Tolkien experience as a soldier in 1916?

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

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

Tolkien served at the Battle of Thiepval Ridge and became ill with trench fever later that year. He returned to England in November 1916 and spent much of the rest of the war recovering and performing duties at home.

Readers often look for direct one-to-one models between the Somme and scenes in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien resisted simple allegorical readings, but his wartime experiences clearly informed his understanding of comradeship, loss, endurance, devastated landscapes, and the pressures of industrial warfare.