In June of 1916, J.R.R. Tolkien went to war. He was 24 years old, a 2nd Lieutenant in the 11th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, freshly married to his sweetheart Edith. They spent the night before his departure at a hotel in Birmingham. “Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute,” he later wrote. “Parting from my wife then... it was like a death.” Rob Gilson was one of Tolkien’s closest friends. They had met at King Edward’s School in Birmingham and formed a tight circle with