Smith was one of the four members of The Tea Club, Barrovian Society, known as TCBS, an organization that met regularly since Tolkien's middle school years, its members drinking tea, smoking pipes, talking about literature and their aspirations, "to hope that together they might achieve something of value" and "to kindle a new light".

That July, the four, Tolkien, Smith, Christopher Wiseman and Robert Gilson, were sent to the front line.

In northern France, the two old friends, Tolkien and Smith, met and talked as often as they could. They talked about poetry and the future, besides the war. Once they walked into a field and saw poppies flying in the wind, although the battle was turning the countryside into a barren land of mud.

When Mu came across this paragraph, he was deeply moved.