The Influence of the Great War on Tolkien

 When writing The Lord of the Rings, was Tolkien influenced by his war experiences? He denied the war had a significative effect on his writing, except maybe for some landscapes. But we know Tolkien was a bit reticent when questioned about his creative process. In his book Tolkien and the Great War, John Garth argued that the author's experiences in the conflict influenced Middle-earth's mythology.

Difficult to demonstrate. In some cases, it seems obvious; in others less evident, but we always remain in the area of conjectures.

An interesting similarity I've read in an essay, part of "Something Has Gone Crack" - New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War (edited by Janet Brennan Croft & Annika Röttinger - Walking Tree Publishers). The essay by Tom Shippey and John Bourne touches on several military aspects of the war, the British Army evolving, the changing face of the battle, and the Kitchener Army.

Between other topics, there is a comparison between the description of an aerial explosion of a projectile (by Siegfried Sassoon) and a passage from The Lord of the Rings. The shell creates a smoke cloud that expands, moves, and dissipates, at a point taking the shape of a man. There's an uncanny similarity with the cloud emerging from Saruman's dead body (after the wizard is stabbed by Wormtongue): a cloud in the form of a body, looking west, then dispersed by the wind with a sigh. The authors note that direct borrowing can't be proved, but the similarity is quite strong. We'll never know.