Which British infantry regiment did C.S. Lewis serve with during the First World War?

C.S. Lewis served with the Somerset Light Infantry during the First World War.

Lewis volunteered for military service while studying at Oxford and was commissioned into the Somerset Light Infantry. He served on the Western Front in 1917 and was wounded during the Battle of Arras. The experience brought him into direct contact with trench warfare, loss, and the psychological pressures of combat.

His close friend Edward Courtnay Francis Moore was killed in the war. Lewis had made a promise to Moore’s mother that he would care for her, and he later kept that commitment by helping to support her and living with her and her daughter for many years after the war.

Lewis’s wartime experiences influenced his later writing, although they should not be reduced to a single explanation for his religious or literary development. He had already been shaped by reading, imagination, and philosophical questions before the war. The regiment is sometimes confused with other British units associated with Oxford students, but Lewis’s documented regiment was the Somerset Light Infantry.