I'm getting into this discussion late- after very many valid points have already been made.
If it's still being considered whether Tolkien was right in sanitizing the battle scenes, I should say "yes".
I, for one, am well aware of the realities of medieval combat- how could a sword fight realistically end, but with one combatant being either killed, or wounded so grievously as to be taken prisoner or maimed permanently? Losing digits and limbs during the fight was quite common, and a lust for carnage and blood colored the behaviour of many of the warriors- far from the commonly held view of the noble champions of chivalry who lived for the defense of Lady and Crown.
Tolkien does give us a small taste of this:
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Then the Captain of Morgoth sent out riders with tokens of parley, and they rode up before the outworks of the Barad Eithel. With them they brought Gelmir son of Guilin, that lord of Nargothrond whom they had captured in the Bragollach; and they had blinded him. Then the heralds of Angband showed him forth, crying: 'We have many more such at home, but you must make haste if you would find them; for we shall deal with them all when we return even so' And they hewed off Gelmir's hands and feet, and his head last, within sight of the Elves, and left him.
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The Silmarillion Of the Fifth Battle
And along similar lines:
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....the enemy was flinging into the City all the heads of those who had fallen fighting at Osgiliath, or on the Rammas, or in the fields. They were grim to look on; for though some were crushed and shapleless, and some had been cruelly hewn, yet many had features that could be told, and it seemed that they had died in pain; and all were branded with the foul token of the Lidless Eye.
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ROTK The Siege of Gondor
That's fairly graphic in itself, and I think that was enough to get across to the reader that war is not a clean, glamorous business. More detail would have been pointless-description for its own sake which did nothing to enrich the story, and would lead one away from the more important elements.