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Old 06-24-2006, 11:03 AM   #1
davem
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Battle of the Somme 90th Anniversary July 1st

As many of us know, the Battle of the Somme (1916) was perhaps the single most formative experience of Tolkien's life, in which he lost two of his three closest friends: Rob Gilson & Geoffrey Bache Smith. It had a profound effect not just on his personal but also on his creative life. This article is from the forthcoming Tolkien Encyclopedia.

Perhaps we should all take a moment this coming Saturday to reflect on the suffering & sacrifice involved & to realise that without that time of horror we would probably not have the works that mean so much to us.

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World War I

The First World War saw Tolkien lay the foundations of Middle-earth. Here, an outline of his creative output between 1914 and 1918, and a discussion of the war's influence on his life's work, must follow a summary of his wartime experiences—as a student, as an army officer in Britain and on the Western Front, and as a war invalid.

The student
Hostilities broke out when Tolkien, 22, had completed the second year of his English degree course at Oxford University. When Britain declared war on Germany, on 4 August, he was on holiday in Cornwall. By October, despite pressure from his aunts and uncles, he had decided to defer enlistment in the armed forces until after his degree. He said later that this was because he did not relish military action; but at the time he told friends that as a young man with a fiancée and little money, he had to prioritize his future academic career.

In October, beginning his final undergraduate year, Tolkien joined the Officer Training Corps. Oxford was now full of soldiers, makeshift military hospitals and war refugees. Friends enlisted in the army, including G.B. Smith and R.Q. Gilson, whom he met up with in December 1914 in a 'Council of London' that saw their clique, the TCBS, acquire a new moral and cultural sense of purpose.

The soldier
Having achieved a first-class degree in June 1915, Tolkien quickly followed Smith into the Lancashire Fusiliers—celebrated for the gruelling Gallipoli landings that April—as a temporary second lieutenant, the lowest rank of commissioned officer. He trained from July 1915 with other officers at Bedford but was disappointed to not be assigned a place in the regiment's 19th Battalion, with which Smith would be going to war. Instead, in August Tolkien was placed with the 13th Battalion, purely a training unit, near Lichfield, Staffordshire, and as winter drew in he moved with it to bleak camps on Cannock Chase. Tolkien was bored by training, oppressed by military discipline and depressed by the war. At the start of 1916, Tolkien began to receive letters from Smith and Gilson describing the horrors of the Western Front. In March, Tolkien returned to Oxford for his official graduation and, in Warwick, married Edith Bratt, who then took lodgings at Great Haywood, near Cannock Chase. He had chosen to specialize in signals, which was a safer occupation than leading a platoon, and which appealed to his interest in codes; but his marks after a specialist course in Yorkshire that spring were average.

Into battle
Embarkation orders arrived on June 2, 1916. Tolkien was sent via Folkestone and Le Havre to Le Touquet, where he received final training and awaited further orders for three weeks. He was despatched to meet his service unit, the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, at the village of Rubempré on June 28 and was at Warloy-Baillon, five miles behind the front line, on July 1 when Britain and its allies launched the vast Somme offensive with immediate and tragic losses (20,000 British soldiers dead and 37,000 wounded on the first day). A few days later at Bouzincourt, a village just above the front line and reeking of death, he briefly met up with Smith. Tolkien stayed there at divisional signals H.Q. while the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers went into action and suffered their worst setback of the battle: the loss of an entire company which had advanced too far. Tolkien himself witnessed what he later described simply as 'the animal horror of active service' when he went into action on July 14-16. He found the signals system in chaos and the battlefield choked with corpses, but his battalion took the surrender of hundreds of German soldiers and the entrenched hilltop of Ovillers-la-Boisselle.

On his return to Bouzincourt, Tolkien learned that Gilson had been killed on the first day of the offensive. The news undermined (perhaps only temporarily) his faith in the purpose of the TCBS and brought him into dispute with Smith and Wiseman, the other two surviving members. New duties as battalion signals officer from July 19 kept him busy amid what he called 'the universal weariness' of war as the unit, uprooting itself every few days, rotated through rest, training and a series of trench duties: July 24-30 opposite Beaumont-Hamel, August 7-10 east of Colincamps, August 24 to September 5 in Thiepval Wood and north of Ovillers, September 27-29 in Thiepval Wood again (where the unit had made a minor attack on a German position), and finally from October 6 south of Regina Trench. The Somme turned to a mire, treacherous to navigate, littered with decaying corpses. With little or no ground gained in the campaign of attrition, demoralisation and shell shock affected many soldiers. During a cold snap and a respite from rain on October 21, Tolkien ran the signals operation from a front-line dugout as his battalion joined others in capturing Regina Trench and many German prisoners.

Almost as soon as the battalion had marched out of the line for a series of congratulatory inspections, Tolkien succumbed to trench fever, a chronically debilitating, potentially fatal condition transmitted by lice in the unhygienic trenches. He reported sick on October 27 at Beauval, and the next day, as his battalion took the train to Ypres, Tolkien was taken to an officers' hospital instead. From October 29 to November 7 he was in another hospital at Le Touquet, on November 8-9 he crossed the English Channel in the hospital ship Asturias, and on November 10 he arrived at Birmingham University's wartime hospital.

The invalid
Tolkien spent the remainder of the war either in hospital, convalescing at home or carrying out safer duties in England. Chronic ill-health almost certainly saved his life, as he was reminded by Edith, by Christopher Wiseman, and by the death of G.B. Smith on the Somme on December 3, 1916.

On December 9, Tolkien went to convalesce at Great Haywood. At the end of February 1917, he was sent to hospital in Harrogate, Yorkshire, for a month. On April 19, he joined the Lancashire Fusiliers' 3rd Battalion, which trained new recruits and guarded the coast of Yorkshire's Holderness peninsula. He was put in charge of a battalion outpost at the village of Roos, and then judged fit for general service in June. A relapse hospitalised him in Hull from August to October. Edith, who had moved several times to be near him, returned to Cheltenham to give birth to their son, John, on November 16. At the end of the dark 'starvation year' of 1917, Tolkien was promoted to lieutenant but posted to the 9th Royal Defence Corps, a coastal unit of men too old or unfit to fight, based at Easington, near the tip of the peninsula.

The 11th Lancashire Fusiliers were wiped out near the River Aisne in May 1918. But Tolkien was far away, back at the Cannock Chase camps, in rural lodgings with Edith and John. At the end of June 1918 he was sent once more to the Hull hospital, with gastritis, and in October he was discharged from a convalescent hospital in Blackpool, Lancashire, unfit for military service and with permission to seek civilian employment. Around the armistice, November 11, 1918, the lexicographer W.A. Craigie gave him a job as a sub-editor on the Oxford English Dictionary. Tolkien was officially demobilised on July 16, 1919, at Fovant, on Salisbury Plain, with a temporary disability pension.

Creative output, 1914-18

The first poem of Tolkien's mythology, 'The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star', arising from a reading of Cynewulf, was written at his aunt's farm in Nottinghamshire in September 1914 while he was under pressure to enlist. Back at Oxford, invigorated by infantry drill, he made progress on an adaptation of the story of Kullervo from the Kalevala. Fired with his own idiosyncratic patriotism, he gave a talk on this 'Finnish national epic' in which he expressed the desire for 'something of the same sort that belonged to the English': an anticipation of his entire creative oeuvre. Inspired by the 'Council of London' with his TCBS friends, Tolkien produced a series of poems in April 1915 ranging from fairy-tale ('Goblin Feet') to epic ('The Shores of Faėry'). He also began constructing a 'fairy' language, Qenya, alongside a complex of mythological conceptions centred on immortal Eldamar beyond the western ocean.

After enlistment, Tolkien continued to write poetry and work on Qenya. Training out in the open and among men from all walks of life in 1915-16, he composed landscape poetry set on this side of the western ocean, such as the ambitious 'Kortirion among the Trees', as well as musings on mortality such as 'Habbanan beneath the Stars'. G.B. Smith carried 'Kortirion' in the trenches 'like a treasure', declared himself 'a wild and whole-hearted admirer' and urged Tolkien to publish before going to war; but a collection, 'The Trumpets of Faėrie', was rejected by Sidgwick & Jackson.

Tolkien wrote or revised poetry a little in France, even in the trenches. However, return from the Somme unleashed a flood of creativity. In the Birmingham hospital, Tolkien began the story of 'The Fall of Gondolin' and probably 'The Cottage of Lost Play', the start of a framing narrative for such 'Lost Tales'. He started on a second language, to be spoken by the 'Gnomes' in the ancient Europe of his imagination; Welsh-flavoured, it was the early prototype of Sindarin. The story of the elf-princess Tinśviel and her war-weary lover Beren was inspired by a walk at Roos in spring 1917 when Edith danced among the 'hemlocks' (cow-parsley). Tolkien also began the 'Tale of Turambar', drawing on the story of Kullervo. Meanwhile, at the request of Smith's mother in 1917, he edited his friend's poetry with Wiseman for publication as A Spring Harvest in 1918.

Influence on writing
Tolkien said that his a taste for fairy-stories was 'quickened to full life by war' and that the idea of perpetual conflict between good and evil was a 'conscious reaction' to the popular delusion that the Great War would end all wars. He also wrote that the approaches to Mordor had been coloured by the Somme battlefield landscape and Sam Gamgee was 'a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself'. However, his general reticence, combined with the tendency of early critics to see The Lord of the Rings as an allegory of the Second World War, delayed serious discussion of the First World War's impact until Hugh Brogan tackled it in 1989. John Garth's biographical Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth lays the ground for more informed discussion.

Tolkien might have written nothing of consequence if he had not been impelled by mortal peril (underlined by his TCBS friends). The First World War also furnished key themes, such as mortality and immortality. War probably contributed to his desire to create 'a national epic', and (as an era rich in rumour and new coinages) may have also helped to reveal to him the interdependency of language and mythology. As C.S. Lewis first pointed out, war equipped him with the experience to write The Lord of the Rings. It showed him a world in fear and undergoing cataclysmic change; large-scale military actions; fellowships built and broken; individual heroism and despair; men, trees and villages destroyed with the aid of the machine. In addition, Garth has argued that many 'fantasy' elements in Tolkien's work may be symbolist treatments of wartime experience, with Verlyn Flieger focusing on Tolkien's explorations of dream and exile. Tom Shippey has emphasized Tolkien's place among other witnesses of war in the 20th century who abandoned conventional realism to express their concerns. In a wider literary context, the pattern of Tolkien's 'fairy-stories', in which ordinary people become heroes and experience 'eucatastrophic' resurgences of inspiration against a backdrop of deepening despair, provides a striking contrast to the ironic, disenchanted work of soldiers such as Wilfred Owen whose work is now seen as the epitome of First World War writing.

John Garth
Or let's sit quietly, we three together,
Around a wide-hearth-fire that's glowing red,
Giving no thought to all the stormy weather
That flies above the roof-tree overhead.

And he, the fourth, that lies all silently
In some far distant and untended grave,
Under the shadow of a shattered tree,
Shall leave the company of the hapless brave,

And draw nigh unto us for memory's sake,
Because a look, a word, a deed, a friend,
Are bound with cords that never man may break,
Unto his heart forever to the end.


From a poem by GB Smith on the death of Rob Gilson.

Smith was killed not long after.
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Old 06-24-2006, 01:34 PM   #2
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I have often thought of the horror of the trenches and how lucky we are that we will never have to face it, and that Tolkien survived it. I have many DVDs and books on the subject. I sit and watch those faces pass by, wondering what they could have done to enrich our world, I do not wish to upset anyone, yet I am glad that Tolkien survived The Great War by being invalided. The Somme is a battle honour for my Regiment, as it is for many regiments that survived that horror, but not the politicians knife. The Lancashire Fusileers were my local Regiment, they no longer exist, having been amalgamated with other regiments, diluting the standards, traditions and customs that many young men were proud of, and many died upholding them, these words Tolkien as a young officer of the regiment would understand

Omnia audax, the motto of The 20th of Foot, Daring in all things

And does'nt Tolkuhn mean Foolhardy.

I will raise a glass of port to my old regiment on the 1st of July, and drink to the memory old all who died that day

And I will play The Green Fields of France (No mans land) by The Men They Could'nt Hang
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Old 06-24-2006, 03:25 PM   #3
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Davem,

Thank you for the post. I would not otherwise have remembered this.

I found a site put up by the Imperial War Museum that includes recollections about the battle. Click here for a brief article on Tolkien's service and a photo of the revolver he carried.
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Old 06-24-2006, 04:13 PM   #4
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Davem, my thanks for posting up a history lesson more profound than any I've ever received in a classroom.
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Old 06-24-2006, 04:30 PM   #5
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Quote:
In a wider literary context, the pattern of Tolkien's 'fairy-stories', in which ordinary people become heroes and experience 'eucatastrophic' resurgences of inspiration against a backdrop of deepening despair, provides a striking contrast to the ironic, disenchanted work of soldiers such as Wilfred Owen whose work is now seen as the epitome of First World War writing.
I can not quite express how deeply greatful I am to Tolkien for focusing on this theme. Not because they are more pleasant to think on, but because it is too easy to overlook in them in the midst of overwhelming despair! Thank you for sharing it, davem
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Old 06-26-2006, 05:23 AM   #6
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Pipe Remember regardless

It should be borne in mind that when you remember the Somme you are remembering somewhere in the region of a million men of both sides who died in a sordid, muddy stalemate that dragged on for five months. By the end of the first day, British and Empire casualties alone totalled 19,240 dead and 38,230 wounded. I know that Bźthberry will thank me for mentioning the First Newfoundlanders, one of only two non-British units in the British sector, who entered the field with a Battalion strength of 801 and the following morning had 68 men fit for duty, the worst Battalion casualties of the day. The Tyneside Irish Brigade (34th Division) advanced more than a mile under heavy fire and were practically annihilated. Such is the butcher's bill for one day of a four-year war.

Our main interest, I suppose, is the British 29th Division ("The Incomparable Division"), which comprised the 86th, 87th and 88th Brigades. It was to the 86th Brigade that the First Battalion, the Lancashire Fusiliers was assigned. The 29th Division order of battle included the 16th Battalion, the Middlesex Regiment, which was excusively recruited from public (read extremely prestigious private) schools, but also such famous names as the King's Own Scottish Borderers, the Royal Fusiliers, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and the South Wales Borderers (formerly the 24th Foot, who defended Rorke's Drift). The division was to maintain the British flank, but like much of the British assault its attack was a failure. In fact it was the French XX Corps who made the only obvious gains, and the British units alongside them were the beneficiaries of their attack. The determination of the attackers can be seen in the fact that nine Victoria Crosses were later awarded for individual actions on that day, six of them posthumously. The most ever awarded for a single action was 20, for the Crimean battle of Great Redan in 1855.

By the end of the war, the Entente lines along the Somme had advanced by ten kilometres, at the cost of more than six-hundred thousand casualties. German casualties are generally estimated at around five-hundred thousand. Effectively for the sake of the distance from one side of London to the other an entire generation ceased to exist. Since volunteer Brigades, who selected only the best applicants, were used extensively, the loss of talent and promise is disproportionately high. Had the Lancashire Fusiliers been assigned to the Bapaume sector, or had his battalion been among the leaders of the advance, it is highly likely that J.R.R. Tolkien, or probably 2nd Lt. J. Tolkien, would have made no greater name in print than to appear in the Times Roll of Honour, but perhaps greater men died there who never had a chance to make their mark.

In these jingoistic times it's worth remembering that Britain in 1914 was nearing the end of a century of domestic peace, with burgeoning nationalist pride in the strength of her armed forces and a growing mistrust of foreigners. A massive mutual deterrant, delicate checks and balances and complicated diplomatic ties completely failed in the face of imperialistic paranoia and self-interest to prevent a war that ended not in peace, but in a twenty-year cease fire. We are lucky that the likes of Tolkien, Lewis, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and others survived, but a gifted poet in Wilfred Owen and a comic author who betters Wodehouse in H.H. Munro were cut off with their careers unfinished, and they are only two names among many. We should remember how near we came not to having the works we discuss here, but it's more important to remember what was actually lost and why. Obviously those who survived gave much thought to it, some to the difference between the ideal and reality of war, others, like Tolkien, considering the very nature of good and evil. Many arguments for pacifism and international co-operation were born in the aftermath, and even the seed of the United Nations was sown as the pieces were gathered up. That such world-shattering events should be tied up with the history of Middle-earth seems hardly surprising, and it's inevitable that when intelligent and sensitive people try to reason out a great horror something remarkable must happen. What ought to be surprising is that less in Tolkien's line did come out of it, and that we are so quick to forget the events themselves. I am reasonably sure that Tolkien never did, and he was only present at the front for a very short space.
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Old 07-01-2006, 04:51 AM   #7
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Lest we forget.

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/soldiers%20cemy.htm

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Old 10-30-2006, 02:19 PM   #8
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Tolkien's cavalry chase

Again, no proof of anything here but a "denial of disproof": it appears that Totenkopf or skull-and-crossbones badges were worn by the Prussian 1st and 2nd Life Hussar regiments, which were attached to the Prussian Guard- and If I've read John Garth's book correctly, the Prussian Guard was the corps Tolkien's division faced on the Somme. As already posted, all German cavalry were issued lances, and it was a common Allied mistake to therefore call them all "Uhlans."
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Old 10-31-2006, 02:43 AM   #9
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Pipe Dread Horsemen

To be honest I've been thinking that a lot of my comments about that were rubbish for some time. Basically I misread the original post as simply a dream rather than a nightmare brought on by actual events. There's no particular reason why Tolkien would have made up a wartime adventure, and it's no more unlikely than a lot of other things that happened on the Western Front. Thanks for the information about German cavalry insignia: of course skulls and crossbones are popular motifs in military badges, and it was always unlikely that British lancers were the only ones to adopt them.
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Old 11-03-2006, 12:45 PM   #10
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Seems more or less a good place to drop in this nugget of info, though it relates to WWII and Tolkien...

There's a book out by Adrian Gilbert (POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe) which includes a look at those Allied PoWs held in German and Italian camps who were fortunate enough to be kept occupied with educational opportunities - one of which was to take a Literature exam which was set by Tolkien, Lewis and Leonard Rice-Oxley.

In the new Companion & Guide there's an entry thus:

Quote:
12 March 1943: Tolkien chairs an English Faculty Board meeting. He, C.S. Lewis & Leonard Rice-Oxley are appointed to be examiners of Allied prisoners of war in German & Italian camps who have worked at the Board's set syllabus. Tolkien submits a scheme for an English course for Navy & Air Force cadets he has drawn up after consultation with tutors. This is approved, & he is appointed director of the course. He will hold this office until March 1944 - Tolkien also attends a General Board Meeting.
Very interesting that Tolkien not only helped with the PoW educational scheme (and interesting that I never knew some PoWs were so well treated - the bad things we just assume that happen in war!), but was also involved in setting up English courses for cadets. I wonder how long this English course was used, and if it continued after the war? If so then my father will have taken Tolkien's English course in the RAF. Yet another example of how Tolkien served his country - in two wars.
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