Editing J. R. R. Tolkien (section)

=== First World War ===

[[File:Tolkien-WWI-Uniform.jpg|thumb|upright|Tolkien in his military uniform]]

In August 1914, Britain entered the [[First World War]]. Tolkien's relatives were shocked when he elected not to volunteer immediately for the [[British Army]]. In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled: "In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage."<ref name="Letters, No. 43" group="T" /> Instead, Tolkien, "endured the [[wikt:obloquy|obloquy]]",<ref name="Letters, No. 43" group="T" /> and entered a programme by which he delayed enlistment until completing his degree. By the time he passed his finals in July 1915, Tolkien recalled that the hints were "becoming outspoken from relatives".<ref name="Letters, No. 43" group="T" /> He was commissioned as a temporary [[second lieutenant]] in the [[Lancashire Fusiliers]] on 15 July 1915.<ref name="Carpenter 1977 p77">{{harvnb|Carpenter|1977|pp=77–85}}</ref><ref>{{London Gazette|issue=29232|page=6968|date=16 July 1915}}</ref> He trained with the 13th (Reserve) Battalion on [[Cannock Chase]], Rugeley Camp near to [[Rugeley]], Staffordshire, for 11 months. In a letter to Edith, Tolkien complained: "Gentlemen are rare among the superiors, and even human beings rare indeed."<ref>''[[Tolkien and the Great War]]'', p.&nbsp;94.</ref> Following their wedding, Lieutenant and Mrs. Tolkien took up lodgings near the training camp.<ref name="Carpenter 1977 p77" /> On 2 June 1916, Tolkien received a telegram summoning him to [[Folkestone]] for posting to France. The Tolkiens spent the night before his departure in a room at the Plough & Harrow Hotel in [[Edgbaston]], Birmingham.<ref name="Tolkien Society Memorials">{{cite web |date=29 October 2016 |title=Memorials |url=https://www.tolkiensociety.org/society/memorials/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308102744/https://www.tolkiensociety.org/society/memorials/ |archive-date=8 March 2021 |access-date=3 March 2021 |publisher=[[The Tolkien Society]]}}</ref> He later wrote: "Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then ... it was like a death."<ref>{{harvnb|Garth|2003|p=138}}</ref>

==== France ====
On 5 June 1916, Tolkien boarded a troop transport for an overnight voyage to [[Calais]]. Like other soldiers arriving for the first time, he was sent to the [[British Expeditionary Force (World War I)|British Expeditionary Force]]'s base depot at [[Étaples]]. On 7 June, he was informed that he had been assigned as a signals officer to the 11th (Service) Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers. The battalion was part of the [[74th Brigade (United Kingdom)|74th Brigade]], [[25th Division (United Kingdom)|25th Division]]. While waiting to be summoned to his unit, Tolkien sank into boredom. To pass the time, he composed a poem titled ''The Lonely Isle'', which was inspired by his feelings during the sea crossing to Calais. To evade the British Army's [[postal censorship]], he developed a code of dots by which Edith could track his movements.<ref name="Garth144">{{harvnb|Garth|2003|pp=144–145}}</ref> He left Étaples on 27 June 1916 and joined his battalion at [[Rubempré]], near [[Amiens]].<ref>{{harvnb|Garth|2003|pp=147–148}}</ref> He found himself commanding enlisted men who were drawn mainly from the mining, milling, and weaving towns of Lancashire.<ref>{{harvnb|Garth|2003|pp=148–149}}</ref> According to [[John Garth (author)|John Garth]], he "felt an affinity for these working class men", but military protocol prohibited friendships with "[[Other ranks (UK)|other ranks]]". Instead, he was required to "take charge of them, discipline them, train them, and probably censor their letters ... If possible, he was supposed to inspire their love and loyalty."<ref name="Garth149">{{harvnb|Garth|2003|p=149}}</ref> Tolkien later lamented, "The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."<ref name="Garth149" />

==== Battle of the Somme ====
[[File:Schwaben Redoubt by William Orpen IWM Art.IWM ART 3000.jpg|thumb|right|'' The Schwaben Redoubt'', painting by William Orpen. [[Imperial War Museum]], London]]

Tolkien arrived at the [[Battle of the Somme|Somme]] in early July 1916. In between terms behind the lines at [[Bouzincourt]], he participated in the assaults on the [[Schwaben Redoubt]] and the [[Leipzig salient]]. Tolkien's time in combat was a terrible stress for Edith, who feared that every knock on the door might carry news of her husband's death. Edith could track her husband's movements on a map of the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]]. The Reverend Mervyn S. Evers, [[Anglican]] chaplain to the Lancashire Fusiliers, recorded that Tolkien and his fellow officers were eaten by "hordes of lice" which found the Medical Officer's ointment merely "a kind of ''[[hors d'oeuvre]]'' and the little beggars went at their feast with renewed vigour."<ref>Quoted in {{harvnb|Garth|2003|p=200}}</ref> On 27 October 1916, as his battalion attacked [[Regina Trench]], Tolkien contracted [[trench fever]], a disease carried by [[lice]]. He was invalided to England on 8 November 1916.<ref>{{harvnb|Carpenter|1977|p=93}}</ref>

According to his children [[John Tolkien (priest)|John]] and [[Priscilla Tolkien]], "In later years, he would occasionally talk of being at the front: of the horrors of the first German [[Chemical weapons in World War I|gas attack]], of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment, of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot, through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men's equipment as well as his own to encourage them to keep going. ... Some remarkable relics survive from that time: a trench map he drew himself; pencil-written orders to carry bombs to the 'fighting line.{{'"}}<ref>{{harvnb|Tolkien|Tolkien|1992|p=40}}</ref>

Many of his dearest school friends were killed in the war. Among their number were Rob Gilson of the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, who was killed on the [[first day of the Somme]] while leading his men in the assault on [[Beaumont Hamel]]. Fellow T.C.B.S. member Geoffrey Smith was killed during the battle, when a German artillery shell landed on a first-aid post. Tolkien's battalion was almost completely wiped out following his return to England.<ref>{{harvnb|Carpenter|1977|pp=93, 103, 105}}</ref>

[[File:Lancashire Fusiliers trench Beaumont Hamel 1916.jpg|thumb|right|Men of the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers in a communication trench near [[Beaumont Hamel]], 1916. Photo by [[Ernest Brooks (photographer)|Ernest Brooks]]]]

According to John Garth, [[Kitchener's Army]], in which Tolkien served, at once marked existing social boundaries and counteracted the class system by throwing everyone into a desperate situation together. Tolkien was grateful, writing that it had taught him "a deep sympathy and feeling for the [[Tommy Atkins|Tommy]]; especially the plain soldier from the agricultural counties".<ref>{{harvnb|Garth|2003|pp=94–95}}</ref>

==== Home front ====
{{further|The Great War and Middle-earth}}

A weak and emaciated Tolkien spent the remainder of the war alternating between hospitals and garrison duties, being deemed medically unfit for general service.<ref>{{harvnb|Garth|2003|pp=207 ''et seq.''}}</ref><ref>Tolkien's [[Webley Revolver|Webley .455]] service revolver was put on display in 2006 as part of a [[Battle of the Somme]] exhibition in the [[Imperial War Museum]], London. (See {{cite web |title=Second Lieutenant J R R Tolkien |url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-lieutenant-j-r-r-tolkien |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181125162651/https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-lieutenant-j-r-r-tolkien |archive-date=25 November 2018 |website=Battle of the Somme |publisher=[[Imperial War Museum]]}} and {{cite web |url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30034679 |title=Webley.455 Mark 6 (VI Military) |work=Imperial War Museum Collection Search |publisher=[[Imperial War Museum]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181125162641/https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30034679 |archive-date=25 November 2018 |url-status=live}})</ref><ref>Several of his service records, mostly dealing with his health problems, can be seen at the National Archives. ({{cite web |title=Officer's service record: J R R Tolkien |url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/people/tolkien.htm  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090308111409/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/people/tolkien.htm |archive-date=8 March 2009 |access-date=2 December 2007 |website=First World War |publisher=National Archives}})</ref> During his recovery in a cottage in [[Little Haywood]], [[Staffordshire, England|Staffordshire]], he began to work on what he called ''[[The Book of Lost Tales]]'', beginning with ''[[The Fall of Gondolin]]''. ''Lost Tales'' represented Tolkien's attempt to create a mythology for England, a project he would abandon without ever completing.<ref>{{harvnb|Carpenter|1977|p=98}}</ref> Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps. It was at this time that Edith bore their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. In a 1941 letter, Tolkien described his son John as "(conceived and carried during the starvation-year of 1917 and the great [[U-boat Campaign (World War I)|U-boat campaign]]) round about the [[Battle of Cambrai (1917)|Battle of Cambrai]], when the end of the war seemed as far off as it does now".<ref name="Letters, No. 43" group="T" /> Tolkien was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 6 January 1918.<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=30588 |supp=y|page=3561|date=19 March 1918}}</ref> When he was stationed at [[Kingston upon Hull]], he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby [[Roos]], and Edith began to dance for him in a clearing among the flowering hemlock. After his wife's death in 1971, Tolkien remembered:<ref name="Letter 340" group="T" />

{{blockquote|I never called Edith ''Luthien''—but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the ''Silmarillion''. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks<ref>Following rural English usage, Tolkien used the name "hemlock" for various plants with white flowers in umbels, resembling [[poison hemlock|hemlock]] (''Conium maculatum''); the flowers Edith danced among were more probably [[cow parsley]] (''Anthriscus sylvestris'') or [[wild carrot]] (''Daucus carota''). See [[John Garth (author)|John Garth]], ''[[Tolkien and the Great War]]'' (Harper Collins/Houghton Mifflin 2003, chapter 12), and Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, & Edmund Weiner, ''[[The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary]]'' (OUP 2006).</ref> at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing—and {{em|dance}}. But the story has gone crooked, & I am left, and {{em|I}} cannot plead before the inexorable [[Mandos]].<ref name="Letter 340" group="T">{{harvnb|Carpenter|Tolkien|1981|loc=''Letters'' #340 to Christopher Tolkien, 11 July 1972.}}</ref>}}

On 16 July 1919, Tolkien was taken off active service, at Fovant, on Salisbury Plain, with a temporary disability pension.<ref name="Grotta p. 58">{{harvnb|Grotta|2002|p=58}}</ref> On 3 November 1920, Tolkien was demobilized and left the army, retaining his rank of lieutenant.<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=32110 |supp=y|page=10711|date=2 November 1920}}</ref>