Remembrance Day – Famous Authors Who Served

Remembrance Day. I can only imaging that if you survive war, your worldview and insights will be greatly changed. A friend suggested I research how many famous authors participated in wars, either as military or in the thick of things as relief workers. I can only imagine their experience shaped them and their work. Thank you to all who served and fought for our freedom.​

For instance, J. R. R. Tolkien, mostly known for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, joined the British Army in July 1915 after getting his degree at Oxford. Interestingly, most people at Oxford signed up when Britain declared war on Germany and the University was reduced to just 24 students. Shipping out to France on June 4th, 1916, he participated in the bloody Battle of the Somme and spent almost four months in the trenches.

How many battles in Lord of the Rings have Orcs and other beasts swarming over embattled ramparts in protracted, gruesome, and desperate sieges? How well does Tolkien portray man at his lowest ebb, desperate to succumb to their fate, yet finding the spark to hang on against an evil but unknown enemy. The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two contains short stories that were drafted during his time in the war and formed the genesis of The Legendarium, his lifelong work. Middle Earth – the setting for The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954/5) – was center stage in The Legendarium as it evolved over the next several decades.
​
Tolkien served in the trenches until October 27th when trench fever hospitalized him and ended his active service. It would appear that the scars and impressions of those months stayed with him throughout his writing career.
​
Below is a short (linked) list of notables from a much longer list if you follow the Wikipedia link at the end.  

• Edith Wharton (WW1, relief work with wounded soldiers and child refugees) first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, Age of Innocence.
• Dorothy Canfield Fisher (WW1, relief work with children in Paris, and making braille books for soldiers blinded in battle). Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the ten most influential women in the USA after she brought the Montessori Method to the US and presided over the first Adult Education Programs.
• Enid Bagnold (WW1, British Women’s Services, and nurse and then a driver in France). National Velvet is her most famous work, but she won critical acclaim with many others.
• Ernest Hemingway (WW1, Ambulance driver, Correspondent Spanish Civil War). No American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway. He experienced it firsthand, wrote dispatches from innumerable frontlines, and used war as a backdrop for many of his most memorable works.
• Roald Dahl (WW2, acting Wing Commander and Ace over Libya). His works for children include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and The BFG. He and his work have been criticized for antisemitism, racism, and misogyny, in our more enlightened times.
• Robert A Heinlein (WW2, US Naval Officer and Aeronautical Engineer). I like that many of his female characters were technologically capable and formidable, and that he challenged the moral values of his time. He also emphasized the value of critical thinking and scientific accuracy in his science fiction. Yet his heroines were also stereotypically feminine, so he did somewhat bend to the cultural pressure of his day. he wrote so many titles and won many awards, but I’d recommend Friday for its portrayal of strong women.
• Frank Herbert, (WW2 US Navy Seabees). Best known for The Dune Saga.
• A.A. Milne (WW1 he joined the British Army and fought in the Somme. After being sent home due to becoming an invalid, he wrote propaganda articles for MI7. In WW2 he joined the Home Guard as a Captain). His schoolteacher was H.G. Wells, and he was part of an amateur cricket team alongside fellow writers J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and P. G. Wodehouse.
• Arthur C Clarke (WW2 Flight Lt, Royal Air Force involved in early-warning radar and ground-controlled approach systems to guide pilots to the runway in bad weather). A Space Odyssey is his most famous work but along with Heinlein and Asimov (who worked at a navel research lab in WW2) he was considered on of The Big Three science fiction writers in history.
• Robert Jordan (Vietnam, helicopter door gunner serving two tours of duty. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star.) The Wheel of Time Saga was his most famous work, but he wrote many others and contributed to the Conan the Barbarian books.

List of authors in war - Wikipedia