The year is 1917. J.R.R. Tolkien, on medical leave from the British Army, tries to process what he saw at the Battle of the Somme. His stories become the epic Lord of the Rings. The battle of Messines in Flanders opens with 19 mines killing 10,000 in the deadliest deliberate non-nuclear man-made explosion in history - it could be heard in London. Half a million are killed in the Battle of Passchendaele. Wilfred Owen writes his anti-war poem "Dulce et Decorum est". And this ring was made in Birmingham, England as a war memorial for British soldiers.