C.S. Lewis served in World War I as a British Army officer before becoming an Oxford tutor. He enlisted in 1917 and was commissioned in the Somerset Light Infantry. He served on the Western Front in France and was wounded at the Battle of Arras in April 1918.
Lewis was sent home after being wounded and later left the army in 1919. His wartime experiences shaped some of his views about suffering, friendship, mortality, and the problem of pain, although his later writings should not be treated as simple memoirs of trench warfare.
He returned to Oxford after the war and studied at University College. In the early 1920s he became a tutor in philosophy and then in English literature, eventually joining Magdalen College in 1925. World War II began more than two decades after his military service, so it is not the conflict associated with his army career.