The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) p. 787
I spent a pleasant evening with a friend in a pub recently (Thanks, Ben!) talking about The Lord of the Rings and we got to thinking about heroes and, more specifically, the kind of heroes that Tolkien’s hobbits are. We compared them to superheroes in, say, a Marvel comic or film. Now I was an avid reader of those comics as a boy and I am happy to say this with pride now with C.S Lewis’s thought in mind that he would rather see a boy reading a comic with pleasure than a classic novel because he thought he had to. I also fell in love with Narnia so I hope that would have pleased him too. I was fascinated by the characters of the heroes and their inner struggles just as much as their triumphs over evil. I was just starting to become aware of my own struggles and they gave me some comfort and the thought that I might be a hero too.
But we agreed that Tolkien created a different kind of hero in Frodo and Sam. In fact, as Tom Shippey has shown, he created the kind of hero that could only have been created in a 20th century story, the kind that would have experienced industrial warfare, as Tolkien and Lewis did on the Western Front of the First World War of 1914-18. And while in a Marvel story the hero comes to save the day while the rest of us run for cover or stand helplessly with our hands raised over our heads as the forces of evil destroy our city around us, Tolkien’s hobbits are more like us.
Yesterday I listened, deeply moved, to a news report that the French military attaché to the United Kingdom unexpectedly arrived at the hundredth birthday celebration of a veteran of the Normandy landings of June 1944 and presented him with France’s highest honour, the Legion d’honneur. I was moved by this because my father took part in those landings and, had he lived, would recently have celebrated his own hundredth birthday. I felt that my Dad was being honoured too. The old gentleman was interviewed on the radio and, speaking with admirable clarity, said that he did not feel that he deserved the award because, as he put it, “I was just there”. I think my father would have said the same thing. In fact the only story that he ever told us of the experience was that as he was going ashore on the Normandy beaches in his American built landing craft he noted that it had an ice-cream maker fitted and wondered what it was doing there. If any of my American readers know the answer please let me know in the comments below.
But that “I was just there” remark typifies Tom Shippey’s argument about the “heroes” of 20th century warfare. Whereas Lancelot, riding to rescue Guinevere from her captors, is a hero of romance, the veterans of the Normandy landings of 1944 were “just there”, doing their duty and trying to stay alive.
Tolkien gives us both kind of heroes in his story though he hardly ever used the word. In Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, following the orcs of Isengard across the plains of Rohan in the hope of freeing Merry and Pippin from their captivity we have the kind of hero that Sir Thomas Malory would have recognised in his Morte D’Arthur. In Frodo and Sam trying to find a way down from the Emyn Muil to the livid marshes below we have something quite different. They are more like the men going ashore on the Normandy beaches in 1944. They just keep going. Or, at least, they try to.
But Frodo and Sam give a dignity to every person who has ever just kept on going, trying their best to do whatever good they can in their lives. I have had conversations with my daughters about this recently as they have looked in horror at evils in the world and have wondered what can be done. I have thought about it in reference to my own life as I have asked myself the question, “What use have I been?” And like Frodo and Sam, I won’t pretend that my story has been like Aragorn’s or Lancelot’s although there was a time when I wanted to be like that, but, whether I ever write it down or not, I will try to create my own Red Book in my head of what I have tried to do, of how I have tried to answer Gandalf’s principle that all any of us can do is “to decide what to do with the time that is given us”.
And not to give up.
Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings 
That’s a lovely parallel between Frodo and Sam and the soldiers on the Normandy beaches. Just being there; trying to keep going. The heroism of the ordinary. Tolkien understood and celebrated that heroism in the soldiers with whom he shared the experience of the Somme. What can we achieve in our lives? “He who endures to the end will be saved.” Or, as Churchill is said to have put it, “keep buggering on.”
There’s a lot to be said for just keeping buggering on!
Hi there, love your blog. I’m an American offering an answer to your query. I happen to work on an old destroyer ship that is now a museum, but was commissioned during the second world war. Ice cream was mainly a morale booster for the men fighting overseas. Apparently all branches of the military attempted to provide ice cream to the men during war time, but I dare say that the Navy was the most successful, because they did indeed have ice cream machines onboard their vessels. There apparently was even an ice cream barge sent to the Pacific theater at one point, but I would need to do more research into the authenticity of that myself. Someone with a food blog did a nice little write-up about ice cream’s role during war time: https://www.thefoodhistorian.com/blog/world-war-wednesday-ice-cream-is-a-fighting-food
My grandfather was a Marine during the Cold War, stationed mainly in the Mediterranean, and that man was devoted to his ice cream to his dying day. I believe that little connections to homey comforts like that can do wonders for young men stationed so far from home and living and working in such stressful and arduous conditions.
Amanda, thank you so much for getting in touch; for your kind words about my blog and for your fascinating information about the role of ice cream during the two world wars. As I wrote in my piece sadly I cannot pass this information onto my father although I hold onto the hope that one day, in our heavenly home, he and I will sit down together to have a long, long talk about many things. There is so much that I want to know about his war time experiences. I know that he was seconded to a Canadian unit and that he and some Canadian soldiers found themselves surrounded in a field by German soldiers. The problem is that I don’t know how they got away. There is so much to talk about.
Like you, I think it is so important to keep the memory alive of those who have served their country and the greater good. I hope that in your work in a navy museum that you get a lot of interest from the public. I remember that in my student days in Southampton University in England that an American naval ship came into port and some of the men came to the church that I attended on a Sunday morning. Some of the men came to lunch with us afterwards and they kindly offered us a visit to their ship in return. I still remembered them showing us the cramped conditions in which the marines were quartered and I bet your grandfather could tell stories about that. I think that we all owe them a debt of gratitude. As you say they had to live in stressful and arduous conditions.
So sadly I cannot pass on your information to Dad but I will gladly pass it on to my family. Thank you so much, once again.