I have a question about historical memory in Tolkien, and I'm wondering a bit whether @BretDevereaux can answer it.
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So, I have thoughts. I think the first thing we want to be thinking here is in terms of a medieval, rather than modern information environment. Tolkien's timeline is mythic in scope, but even allowing for some exaggeration there, the battle is very much out of living memory.
So getting details on the battle requires - for Gondor at least - getting documents on it. And the documentary tradition (maybe a report from Rivendell at some point) is likely, thousands of years later, to exist only in fragments.