A week later Tolkien’s battalion was on a train to Ypres, the scene of some of the most devastating battles of the war. Yet Tolkien was not with them; he was stricken with “trench fever,” a bacterium that entered the bloodstream through lice. He was transported to an officers’ hospital to recover. Chronic ill health sent him back to England on November 8, 1916, to recuperate at Birmingham University’s wartime hospital.
