The War and Lewis's Treaty with Reality

This thread traces Lewis's decision to limit the war's claim on his attention, his service at the front, and the perspective it gave him on life.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

A Future Obligation

A Future Obligation Ireland and Conscription Because Ireland had no conscription, Lewis had to decide for himself whether he would serve. He chose to join the army when he reached the required age. A Boundary Around the Present Having made that decision, he refused to let constant war news occupy his mind before his service began. He later described this as a treaty with reality rather than an evasion of obligation.

Oxford Before Service

Oxford Before Service Scholarship and Residence Lewis won a scholarship and began at Oxford, where wartime conditions had transformed college life. The university offered an unusual, temporary community rather than normal undergraduate experience. Military Preparation His immediate practical aim was to enter the Officers' Training Corps and proceed to the army. Academic promise and wartime expectation occupied the same uncertain horizon.

Arrival at the Front

Arrival at the Front Commission and Deployment Lewis completed officer training and received a commission in the Somerset Light Infantry. He reached the front-line trenches on his nineteenth birthday. A First Sense of War The first bullet he heard became an imaginative moment as well as a physical warning. It connected the reality of war to the ancient scenes he had encountered in Homer.

Trench Life and Loss

Trench Life and Loss Weariness and Danger Lewis remembered waterlogged trenches, cold, exhaustion, shells, and the dead. The routine made sleep difficult and danger ordinary, while the landscape itself could be reduced to bare earth. Human Attachments Sergeant Ayres became a protective, almost paternal presence for the inexperienced officer. Lewis's memories of ordinary soldiers grew more vivid than any abstract account of military glory.

Wounded and Returned

Wounded and Returned The Injury Lewis was wounded near Mont-Bernanchon and evacuated from the front. In the moment he thought he was dying, he experienced the fact almost clinically, without the fear he had expected. A Changed Outlook Recovery and later reading widened his appreciation of energetic, living forms of experience. War remained a sharply separated part of his memory, but it had altered his sense of what mattered.

As the First World War continued, before Lewis turned nineteen

1916 to the summer of 1917

November 1917, on Lewis's nineteenth birthday

Winter 1917 to spring 1918 near Arras

April 1918 and the following months