There is immense sympathy for the character who has done repulsive things in battle to win, and finds it difficult to live with himself afterward. There is much evidence in Drake's personal afterwords to his books that he identifies with that position and that it relates to his own military experience (see, for instance, his essay "How They Got That A Way").That is how we most often return to experience the horror,through personal connection with character,after our detachment has been required by all the distancing devices. If you remain detached, you are not getting it, or rather by saying to yourself, in effect undisturbed, "yes, this is the way war is," you are denying any broader literary meaning. This is the paradox of Drake's military fictions.

All of the above is evident in his early stories and in Ranks of Bronze, and many other novels. It is the essence of the Hammer's Slammers stories. I'd like to talk about a particular story now to extend the point about broader literary meaning.

Drake's novella, "The Warrior,"is superficially about tank warfare,and about the contrast between the attitudes and behaviors of two commanders of tanks in the Slammers, Sergeant Samuel "Slick" Des Grieux and Sergeant Lucas Broglie, during two military operations nearly ten years apart. Reduced perhaps to oversimplification, Des Grieux is a warrior and Broglie is a soldier; Broglie is sane and Slick is not. They hate each other immediately. Slick Des Grieux is the central character, and his battles are observed in close detail. His tanks are both vehicles and war machines, intelligently extrapolated from the impressive and powerful tanks of today. They are big, fascinating machines, like spaceships are, and are central to the SF appeal. The story is set on two distant planets, the battles are against two different enemies, who are relatively faceless and unimportant. But the enemies have hired competent mercenary armies to defend them against the Slammers, and for the climax, Broglie is hired by a company that ends up opposed to the Slammers. And so in the end it is Broglie against Des Grieux.