A year ago in July I posted a note called "Somme Starlight" in which I discussed the likelihood that Tolkien had seen Venus in the early morning hours of later July or early August of 1916, and that if this did not give him hope in the moment it may well have formed the basis for a pair of later sightings of the star Eӓrendil in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, sightings that did inspire hope in those in darkness.
At the time I wrote the blogpost I had been able to ascertain that 1) Venus was indeed a morning star in July and August, 2) that it was exceptionally bright even for Venus (-4.7 magnitude) for the first half of August, and 3) that the weather seemed to be generally quite clear. This all seemed to fit, but I wanted more specific information on the weather, ideally from someone who was there.
Enter General Sir Henry Seymour Rawlinson, later 1st Baron Rawlinson GCB,
GCSI,
GCVO,
KCMG,
KStJ
who commanded the British Fourth Army during the Battle of the Somme. Most importantly, he is an eye-witness who kept a diary with fairly detailed daily information on the weather, which I found reproduced online here. After some rain early in late June and early July, Rawlinson records only 19 mm, or about 3/4", from 9 July through 15 August, almost none of which fell when Venus was at its brightest in the first half of August. In July Rawlinson records the sky was frequently "overcast," but towards the end of the July and into the first half of August he says either that it was "clear" or remains silent. I don't want to push too hard on his silence by inferring that it means "not overcast" or "clear." But John Buchan's description of the weather in the first fortnight of August as "blazing summer weather" that made the soldiers' helmets rather hot certainly points towards the weather being clear. On Buchan, see here.
So Rawlinson's information makes it seem much more likely that Tolkien would have had ample opportunity to look up from the trenches and see an image that he would later construe as hope.
The idea that the sky was frequently overcast makes this argument stronger. We usually see Earendil's star as a brief glimpse. "There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while."
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