The officer came along the trench and crouched beside the sergeant who was smoking a pipe. The officer was tall, lanky and had a thin face. The air was cold this September morning, and a mist hung in no mans land. Three days of artillery had been bombarding the Swabian redoubt.

“Are we ready?” the officer asked.

“Ah’m about as ready to leave the lice and shit in this trench as Ah’ll ever be.” The sergeant turned away as he coughed, and spat into the three inches of water in the bottom of the trench.

The officer stood up and looked over the parapet at the hill across the way. “Well, with the barrage they’re getting we shouldn’t have that diffi-“

The bullet made the back of his head burst into a pink spray. He collapsed, dead before he even hit the ground.

“Gawd dammit”, the sergeant exclaimed. “Ah should ‘ave warned him about them snipers”

2nd Lieutenant John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, died on the 28th of September 1916, a notebook in his pocket, the first lines of “The Fall of Gondolin” written in pencil.