Mostly confined to a sickbed in England, Tolkien faced a grim accounting. Gilson and Smith were dead. So was Ralph Stuart Payton, another member of the TCBS. He, too, had fought at the Somme. He was killed in action on July 22, 1916, his body never identified. Gone also was Thomas Kenneth “Tea Cake” Barnsley, who was in the debating society with Tolkien. He served as a captain in the 1st Birmingham Battalion, was buried alive by a trench mortar, escaped—only to be killed in action near Ypres in June 1917.
