![]() ![]() Beyond the trenches no-man’s-land was littered with bloated and decaying bodies. “Those that still had faces stared with dreadful eyes. ![]() “Corpses lay in every corner, horribly torn by the shells,” writes Carpenter. His company had been sent to the front on 14 July, writes his biographer Humphrey Carpenter, with many of his battalion killed by machine-gun fire. His records detail he had “pyrexia of unknown origin” – headaches, rashes, eye inflammation and leg pains. Tolkien was suffering from trench fever, which is transmitted by lice, and causes fever. It is currently transcribing and digitising these for searching by the public – something which has not previously been done because of the difficulty of reading the faint pencil, and interpreting the numerous abbreviations. During the rest of the war he was either in hospital, where he had several relapses, or in home service camps,” said the organisation, which described its discovery of The Hobbit author’s records as “astonishing”, because most medical and hospital records were destroyed after the war, with just 2% now remaining in the National Archives. “It is likely that sustaining trench fever may have actually saved his life. ![]() Forces War Records said that while he was convalescing, the 11th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers with which he was serving was hit by German mortar fire, wounding many, with a “massive bombardment” of its frontline following. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |