Marlantes relates to death as follows (pg 16 softcover):

"When I did eventually face death - the death of those I killed and those killed around me - I had no framework or guidance to help me put combat’s terror, exhilaration, horror, guilt, and pain into some larger framework that would have helped me find some meaning in them later."
James R McDonough in 'Platoon Leader - a Memoir of Command in Combat sees it this way:

"I had to do more than keep them alive. I had to preserve their human dignity. I was making them kill, forcing them to commit the most uncivilized of acts, but at the same time I had to keep them civilized. That was my duty as their leader. They were good men, but they were facing death, and men facing death can forgive themselves many things. War gives the appearance of condoning almost everything, but men must live with their actions for a long time afterward. A leader has to help them understand that there are lines they must not cross. He is their link to normalcy, to order, to humanity. If the leader loses his own sense of propriety or shrinks from his duty, anything will be allowed. And anything can happen."

and...

"War is not a series of case studies that can be scrutinized with objectivity. It is a series of stark confrontations that must be faced under the most emotion- wrenching conditions. War is the suffering and death of people you know, set against a background of the suffering and death of people you do not. That reality tends to prejudice the already tough choices between morality and pragmatism."
and Lord Moran a generation earlier saw it in the trenches or WWI as follows (in the chapter: Death):

"In war men meet death daily and in every shape. Nevertheless it is kept from their thoughts by an intuition that so only can they win their secret battle with fear. When men's minds were obsessed with death they did not wait to meet it. This was the way of safety and youth met the threat with their own weapons, humour and mockery and such cold comfort as they could find in leaving this world before their powers began to wane. Besides war is the business of youth and no young man thinks he can ever die."

and...

"As the odds shortened, and it became plain that death was to be the common lot, I thought less of its coming until at last I saw no cruelty in its approach."