No soldier, especially one with Tolkien’s literary cast of mind, could ever forget the experience. As an undergraduate at Oxford, Tolkien already had discovered that he was drawn to ancient legends and the languages in which they were embedded. Not even the demands of active combat could completely distract him from his passion. He began writing bits and pieces of the legends that would form the basis of his epic trilogy: “The early work was mostly done in camps and hospitals between 1915 and 1918—when time allowed.”28 Thus the battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings possess a grim
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