Lofting travelled widely as a civil engineer before enlisting in the Irish Guards regiment of the British Army in the First World War. Not wishing to write to his children about the brutal war, he wrote imaginative letters, which later became the foundation of the successful "Doctor Dolittle" novels for children. Seriously wounded in the war, in 1919 Lofting moved with his family to Killingworth, Connecticut. He was married three times and had three children, one of whom, his son Christopher, became the executor of his literary estate.