6 April 1916 Smith writes to Tolkien at M Lines, Brocton Camp. He says that it is a long time since he has heard from Tolkien. He mentions, but cannot yet recommend, a literary agent to whom he has sent some of his poems, the Authors’ Alliance in London.
Mid-April–mid-May 1916 Tolkien takes a course of instruction at the Northern Command and Ripon Training Centre Signalling School, Farnley Park, *Otley, Yorkshire.
?Late April 1916 Hilary Tolkien is wounded, probably on the Roclincourt front near Arras.
28 April 1916 Acting Captain L.K. Sands, the fellow King Edward’s School student with whom Tolkien travelled to Oxford in October 1911, dies of machine-gun wounds received the previous day in France.
8 May 1916 Tolkien applies to the Adjutant, 13th Battalion, for leave from 13 to 17 May on completion of his signalling course. If leave is granted, his address will be 26 Hamilton Terrace, Leamington.
10 May 1916 A.S. Napier dies.
11 May 1916 The Adjutant, 13th Battalion, replies to Tolkien that no leave is being granted, but then strikes this order and grants him leave until the first train on 15 May.
13 May 1916 Tolkien’s ‘(Provisional) Instructor’s Certificate of Signalling (For Officers)’ is so dated, and signed by the Commandant at Farnley Park. This certifies that Tolkien has qualified, and states that he has obtained 95% accuracy in Written Examination, Examination in Telephony etc. (Oral and Practical), and Knowledge of Map Reading; and speeds for disc of 4 words per minute, for lamp of 6 words per minute, for buzzer of 10 words per minute, and for semaphore of 8 words per minute. – Tolkien presumably now takes his leave, returning to camp on 15 May.
23 May 1916 Smith sends Tolkien at Brocton Camp a telegram from West Bromwich saying that he is on leave until 29 May and asking if they can meet.
24 May 1916 Smith, presumably having received a reply from Tolkien, sends another telegram saying that he proposes to come to Great Haywood on Saturday afternoon and will stay one night.
26 May 1916 Smith sends a telegram to Tolkien c/o Mrs Kendrick (Edith’s landlady) in Great Haywood, giving the arrival time of his train.
27–28 May 1916 Smith visits the Tolkiens in Great Haywood. In a later letter he mentions having met both Edith and Jennie Grove.
?End of May 1916 Smith writes to thank Tolkien for a ‘splendid two days’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).
2 June 1916 Army Headquarters, Cannock Chase, informs Tolkien by telegram that he is to join the British Expeditionary Force in France, but first will report to the Embarkation Staff Officer at Folkestone on 5 June. He is granted 48 hours leave.
3 June 1916 Tolkien and Edith spend the night at the Plough and Harrow Hotel in Hagley Road, Edgbaston.
4 June 1916 In the afternoon, Tolkien and Edith say farewell. He goes to London by train.
5 June 1916 Tolkien takes the 11.05 a.m. train from Charing Cross Station to arrive at Folkestone at 1.00 p.m. There he reports to the Embarkation Staff Officer and spends the night.
6 June 1916 Tolkien crosses the English Channel to Calais and travels to camp No. 32 at Étaples. Equipment he had bought – including a camp bed, sleeping bag, mattress, and spare boots – having failed to arrive, he begs, borrows, or buys replacements. – Possibly on this date he writes or begins to write a poem expressing his feelings for the land he has left, ending with ‘O lonely, sparkling isle, farewell.’ The earliest, undated version has the Qenya title Tol Eressëa, but later the poem will be called *The Lonely Isle (a literal translation from the Qenya) and will bear the dedication ‘For England’. Tolkien’s mythology is now closely tied to England, and the reference in the poem to a ‘fair citadel’ is to both Warwick and Kortirion. – On or after this date Tolkien probably also writes the poem *Habbanan beneath the Stars. He will later note on a revised manuscript of the work ‘Insp[ired] Brocton [Camp] Dec[ember] [19]15, written Étaples June 1916’.
7 June 1916 Tolkien moves to camp No. 25 at Étaples. There newly arrived soldiers are given final training and toughening up before being sent to the front. See note. Tolkien dislikes the hardened professional officers above him, who treat him like a schoolboy, but he will come to respect the ordinary enlisted men. Although as an officer he cannot make friends among them, he appreciates their qualities and will have closer contact with those who serve as his batman. He will soon be assigned from the reserve 13th Battalion to the active 11th Battalion, part of the 74th Infantry Brigade of the 25th Division of the British Expeditionary Force.
June–October 1916 It is now difficult for Tolkien to find the time or suitable conditions to write at length. But he manages to write or revise some poems, and he can develop his stories in his mind and continue to connect their strands so that when eventually he does have leisure to write them down, his stories are almost fully formed. He will later say in an interview that one could not write in the trenches: ‘You might scribble something on the back of an envelope and shove it in your back pocket but that’s all. You couldn’t write. You’d be crouching down among fleas and filth’ (Philip Norman, ‘The Hobbit Man’, Sunday Times Magazine, 15 January 1967, p. 36). But he will also say to his son Christopher in 1944: ‘Lots of the early parts of [the mythology] (and the languages) – discarded or absorbed – were done in grimy canteens, at lectures in cold fogs, in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle-light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire’ (Letters, p. 78). By now he may have already begun to use a small notebook to jot down ideas, brief notes, and single sentences and names. – Since 5 June he has kept a concise diary, recording where he sleeps each night and when, in the coming months, he sees G.B. Smith: for this he uses a small, thin notebook, inscribed after Smith’s death ‘Diary of brief time in France and of the last seven times I saw G.B.S.’ The entries are marked with two symbols which may mark when Tolkien is able to attend Mass, and perhaps when he makes confession. See note. – He sends frequent letters to Edith, but as these are read by the censor Tolkien cannot say too much. He and Edith, however, have devised a secret code of dots which enables her to know roughly where he is.
?18 (possibly 11) June 1916 Smith, having returned to France, writes to Tolkien ‘attached 11th [Battalion] Lancashire Fusiliers, 25th I.B.D., 25 A.P.O. (S) 17, B.E.F.’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford). He is sorry that Tolkien’s summer at Great Haywood had been cut short, and also that Tolkien has not been assigned to the same battalion as Smith.
22 June 1916 Gilson replies to a letter from Tolkien received the previous day on Gilson’s return from a night working party. He is cheered to receive letters from the T.C.B.S. (This seems to be Gilson’s final letter to Tolkien.)
25 June 1916 Smith writes to Tolkien, wishing him the very best of luck ‘in all that may happen to you within the next few months, and may we live beyond them to a better time’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).
27–28 June 1916 Tolkien with other reinforcements travels to join his battalion at the front. After a slow train journey via Abbeville, having taken twenty-four hours to reach Amiens, he marches to the hamlet of Rubempré ten miles away. Gunfire can be heard in the distance.
28 June 1916 The war diary of the 11th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers notes the arrival of Second Lieutenant J.R.R. Tolkien.
29–30 June 1916 The 11th Battalion, as usual when not in the trenches, spends much of the day drilling and at bayonet practice, but Tolkien as an officer trained for signal duties will also spend time in specialist training.
30 June–1 July 1916 On 30 June, departing at 9.15 p.m., the battalion marches