Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps

Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps was the military-training organization C. S. Lewis sought to enter after coming into residence at University College in 1917. In his account, it was not simply an extracurricular institution: it represented his most promising route into the army, and its role in his Oxford plans was overtaken by enlistment before his first term was over.

Purpose in Lewis’s Oxford plans

Lewis entered University College in Trinity Term 1917 while still facing the elementary-mathematics requirement known as Responsions. He had previously failed it and could not recall whether he sat it again, but the examination had become less important than his immediate aim: to enter the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps as his best prospect of joining the army. His first Oxford studies nevertheless continued to have Responsions in view, including algebra with Mr. Campbell of Hertford.

The unsettled first term

Lewis spent less than a term at University College before his papers came through and he enlisted. The term was already unusual: half the College had been converted into a hospital and was occupied by the Royal Army Medical Corps, while only a small group of undergraduates remained in the other part. Lewis describes the period as enjoyable but unsettled and generally unproductive, unlike ordinary undergraduate life. His intended route through the Officers’ Training Corps thus gave way quickly to enlistment, in a College setting shaped by wartime conditions.

Significance

The organization marks the point where Lewis’s university entry and his military plans briefly intersected. He came to Oxford not yet as a settled undergraduate pursuing an ordinary course of study, but with the practical objective of reaching the army through military training. The speed of his enlistment makes the Corps a transitional element in this account: it was the route he had identified, but not the setting in which his wartime service ultimately began.