Tolkien and the Great War
The Threshold of Middle-earth
John Garth
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003
Copyright © John Garth 2003
Previously unpublished material © The Tolkien Trust/The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 2003
Cover: Tolkien and fellow students at Exeter College, Oxford, in June 1914
John Garth asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Ebook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007373871
Version 2019-03-22
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In memory of
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 1892-1973
Christopher Luke Wiseman, 1893-1987
Robert Quilter Gilson, 1893-1916
Geoffrey Bache Smith, 1894-1916
TCBS
Table of Contents
TWO A young man with too much imagination
SEVEN Larkspur and Canterbury-bells
NINE ‘Something has gone crack’
TWELVE Tol Withernon and Fladweth Amrod
Postscript. ‘One who dreams alone’
Tolkien on the Somme, 1916
6 June—Tolkien arrives in France.
28 June—He joins 11th Lancashire Fusiliers.
1 July—Battle of the Somme begins.
3 July—Tolkien reaches the frontline area.
6-8 July—With G. B. Smith in Bouzincourt.
14-16 July—Tolkien takes part in attack on Ovillers.
17 July—He learns of Rob Gilson’s death.
21 July—He becomes battalion signal officer.
24-30 July—Trenches at Auchonvillers.
7-10 August—Trenches east of Colincamps.
16-23 August—Signal officers’