"One day an English shell exploded too close to us. It killed my sergeant, and wounded me. My war was over. Back home I found a very different Oxford from the one I had known before."

-- C.S. Lewis

The Great Knock called C.S. Lewis the brightest student he ever taught, says Lewis scholar, James Como. And, all of Lewis' study paid off as he was accepted to University College at Oxford University in the spring of 1917.

His time at Oxford was interrupted by World War I and he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 3rd Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. His roommate during training was Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore, and the two men promised to look after each other's families if anything happened to one of them during the war.

Lewis celebrated his 19th birthday on the front lines in the Sommes Valley in France. The following year he was briefly hospitalized with trench fever, then returned to his unit and was wounded at the Battle of Arras. He briefly returned to duty and was discharged in late 1918 and returned to Oxford.

His friend Paddy was not so fortunate. Moore was killed in battle and buried in the field just south of Peronne, France in 1918.

"It coarsened him. It hardened him. He saw blood and gore around him. I think it reaffirmed his atheism in his own mind," James Como said.

Lewis was determined to fulfill his part of the bargain he and Paddy had made, and Mrs. Janie King Moore became a surrogate mother to him. It wasn't long before he was living with Moore and her daughter Maureen.

In 1919, Lewis published his first work outside of a school magazine. "Death In Battle," a reflection on Paddy Moore's death, was published in "Reveille" in February.