ABritish soldier began writing “The Fall of Gondolin” while in a hospital bed, stricken by “trench disease” from the lethal front lines of World War I.
A German soldier, the painter Otto Dix, later bemoaned the “lice, rats, barbed wire, fleas, shells, bombs, underground caves, corpses, blood, liquor, mice, cats, artillery, filth, bullets, mortars, fire, steel.” Add poison gas to that ordeal.
Young J…