War In History And Future History

"Cajal sat alone in the middle of the superdreadnaught Valenderay. Communication screens surrounded him, and humming silence, and radial kilometers of metal, machinery, weapons, armor, energies, through which passed several thousand living beings."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT p. VII, 514.

"...Valenderay must not be risked. The whole purpose of all that armament was to protect the command of a fleet."
-op. cit., VIII, p. 531.

Rewind to the early twentieth century, with apologies for a longer than usual quotation:

"At this point, I should like to dwell for a moment on a question the reader must already have asked himself several times: When a man is in charge of a whole army, has he the right to expose himself to the danger of actual fighting? My answer is that there are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or in war. Everything depends on circumstances. Officers who accompanied me in my trips along the front frequently would remark: 'In the old days, even divisional commanders never poked their noses into places like these.' The bourgeois journalists wrote of this as a 'pursuit of self-advertisement,' and in this way translated into their familiar language something that was beyond their ken. In point of fact, the conditions under which the Red Army was created, its personal composition, and the very nature of the civil war demanded exactly this sort of behavior. Everything was built up anew - discipline, fighting tradition, and military authority. Just as it was not in our power, especially in the first period, to supply the army with all its needs from a single center and according to plan, just so were we unable by means of circulars or semi-anonymous appeals to inspire this army, got together under fire, with revolutionary enthusiasm. It was necessary to win authority in the eyes of the soldiers, so that next day one could justify to them the stern demands of the higher command. Where tradition is lacking, a striking example is essential. Personal risk was the unavoidable hazard on the road to victory."
-Leon Trotsky, My Life (New York, 1970), Chapter XXXV, pp. 429-430.

Thus:

Nelson was killed (see image);
Trotsky nearly was;
Cajal is safe deep within his superdreadnaught.