What these cards say about Tolkien

"Even amid what must have been like hell, they longed for the most beautiful things. It brought tears to my eyes, especially when you think that Smith actually died later in the war," he says.

Tolkien survived the war, but lost two close friends. The war, Mu says, became an important turning point in his life, one of the major motives for him to create the legends about the mythical world of the Middle-earth, which has been hailed as one of the greatest creations of the 20th century and been read by generations of readers across the world, inspiring many other writers including American writer George R.R.Martin, the writer of the A Song of Fire and Ice series.

According to Mu, in the chapter The Breaking of the Fellowship, Smith said in a letter to Tolkien he wrote not long before he died, "My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight — I am off on duty in a few minutes — there will still be left a member of the great TCBS to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the TCBS. … my dear John Ronald (Tolkien), and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them."