To quote from the Foreword (second Edition):
Quote:
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An author cannot remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.
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Emphasis mine
There you have it. Tolkien himself admits that one's one life experience and knowledge affect what one writes. But as he states, the way in which it works is very difficult to track.
And personally, I am in agreement with that. So while it may be fascinating to read things in to what he wrote, we may be barking up the wrong tree, on the right track, or just plain confused. At the same time, things that, to Tolkien, were obviously drawn from his life, might well be missed by the whole devoted lot of us.