To wage war is to try to kill the enemy but a commander is also directly responsible for deaths on his own side. He attacks, maybe, if he thinks that he will lose 20% but not if he thinks that he will lose 80%. He sends some men to their deaths so that others can advance. I think that King David deliberately killed a man by sending him into the front line?
The Gorzuni guard their armory with a portable shield that deflects blaster bolts. Manuel orders Reeves to lead a direct charge so that he can lead a smaller group using zero gravity to soar above the enemies' heads. Is Manuel doing a David by trying to eliminate Kathryn's fiancee? Whatever his motives, he has to decide instantly. Reeves is the best man to lead the charge.
Reeves says, "'Like hell!'" (p. 3532, then obeys the order:
"...I swallowed rage and fear and lifted a shout to the men. I'm no braver than anyone else but there is an exaltation in battle, and Manuel used it as calculatingly as he used everything else." (pp. 352-353)
Most of Reeve's men die but Manuel's attack succeeds.
4 comments:
Paul:
Fred Saberhagen's heroic leader Johann Karlsen, in the Berserker story "Stone Place," showed his character by refusing to either send his romantic rival into danger or specifically keep him out of danger. "He disqualified himself, for now, from any use of power; especially to set Mitchell Spain in the forefront of the battle or to hold him back."
N.B.: Spain never intended the rivalry; the Berserkers brainwashed Karlsen's fiancee to fall in love with some random one of his subordinates, in the hope this would mess up the commander's thinking. There's a reason that the highly perceptive Carmpan aliens said of Johann Karlsen that he was one of "the jewels of life, who rise to meet the greatest challenges by becoming supremely men."
On the other hand, in the Belisarius series outlined by David Drake and written by Eric Flint, the Persian King of Kings Khusrau II gave his more troublesome aristocrats plenty of chances to make "glorious" charges against entrenched gun positions. Many of these aristos, full of BS about their "nobility," eagerly accepted such opportunities, soon making them no longer any trouble to the King of Kings.
There's an old military saying that a good officer has to love his men and his army -- but the army doesn't exist for itself, it exists to win victory for the State, so the officer has to be prepared to kill the thing he loves.
‘I am telling you you must not care, sir. The three men died, but they helped to give us a small advance knowledge which we may use against the enemy. At the conference tomorrow they would all answer the same. A few lives to save the many is any captain's rule.’
— Alexander Kent (Douglas Reeman), A Tradition of Victory, Napoleonic wars naval novel
David,
Always an appropriate literary reference.
Paul.
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