I Could See These Guys Forming A Prog Rock Band

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Tolkien’s experiences in World War I. It’s the core of one of Tolkien’s most famous quotes and one of his saddest: “By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.” Only 22 years old when the cascading series of events of the summer of 1914 led to what was first called the Great War and in retrospect World War I, Tolkien seemingly had an advantage with some prior officer training and the ability to stay out of the war to finish his studies, but starting in 1915 he joined all of his friends from pre-university days in serving in the British armed forces for the duration of the conflict. Due to a case of trench fever after his time in the horrific 1916 engagement called the Battle of the Somme, much of his later time during the duration was spent on home duty with his wife and first son, but by that time, many of those friends were already gone. While he specifically resisted too much biographical interpretation of his work, there’s simply no question that his experience at least shaped part of Tolkien’s life from that period forward. What can be said of the early work that Garth introduces as Middle-earth coalesces, and is it a case where his friends’ love for it was maybe not too wise but too well? How does that passionate friendship itself play out in their interactions and letters and more, and how much of it seems to be a hangover from their school days and what they felt they could actually say? Is there something about Tolkien’s small-a anarchism that grows out of his experience as an officer in the war, among other things? And exactly how hard was it to track officer luggage back then?