Tommy Sam Gamgee

Tolkien was a combat veteran of the Western Front.  He noted that by 1918 almost all of his friends were dead.  CS Lewis also was a combat veteran of the Western Front, and he expressed similar sentiments about the men he commanded:

I came to know and pity and reverence the ordinary man: particularly dear Sergeant Ayres, who was (I suppose) killed by the same shell that wounded me. I was a futile officer (they gave commissions too easily then), a puppet moved about by him, and he turned this ridiculous and painful relation into something beautiful, became to me almost like a father.

Being a junior officer in a combat unit in the British Army on the Western Front usually involved about five months of service throughout most of the War, before death or “million pund’ wounds, or serious illness, brought an abrupt end to the service.