David Drake, freshly arrived in Vietnam.

I should’ve written this blog post weeks ago, as soon as I heard about the death of David Drake. That didn’t happen. I kept finding one reason or another to put it off. It’s been almost exactly a month now and it’s time I gave the man his due. He certainly deserves that much.

I've come to realize why it took so long to sit down and write this. While I've never considered Drake to be my favorite author, he was definitely an author who was important to me in a way that few others were. That importance weighed on me and kept me from writing this essay. I didn't want to screw it up.

I read Hammer's Slammers at a crucial point in my life. I've been fascinated by war since I can remember. That was mostly book-learning and TV, but I knew several veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. They had tempered some of my more naive notions about modern mass conflict, but I was still pretty gung-ho on the whole idea. Then I read David Drake.

Between the actual stories and the various forewords and afterwords by Drake in Hammer's Slammers and the other Slammers books that followed, my attitude toward war--especially modern warfare--changed. As David once said, war will always be with us. Anyone who believes otherwise knows jack-all about human nature or is a fool or is both.

Drake showed the waste and misery of war while keeping the stories exciting. To be honest, it was pretty addictive. As a reader, you really felt like you were getting a look into the mindsets of those caught in the middle of a high-tech war machine. The fact that those soldiers were fighting on planets far, far away allowed you to separate any sort of politics that might otherwise skew things while reading a memoir of the Vietnam War or World War II. That is one of the cardinal virtues of SFF: the ability to abstract things out of a current, real world context so they can be looked at in a different light.

In the Slammers tales, the protagonists were mercenaries fighting for the money and whatever intangible thrills or benefits they might derive from facing and dealing out death. Survival, not ideology, was paramount. You did what you had to do. This was hammered home in one story where the Slammers are fighting close to some beautiful, crystalline structures left behind by a mysterious, forgotten alien race. Toward the climax of the tale, one tank crew realizes that to win/survive, they must plow through the alien structures. They do it. It had to be done.

I have a deep reverence for the past, as did David Drake. That hit hard. It really forced me into the shoes of those tankers. Live or die? Kill or be killed? What would you do? Would it even make a difference if one made the 'principled' choice? It always made me wonder if--when Drake rode with the Blackhorse tank regiment in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos--he had seen some ancient ruin destroyed for the sake of survival.

Speaking of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, what Drake had to say in his intro to the Slammers tale, "The Day of Glory" (2006), seems appropriate to quote here:

"We—the Blackhorse—were an elite unit. I was very fortunate to have been assigned to a regiment in which you never had to worry if the guy next to you was going to do his job: he was, and so were you—whatever you thought of war or The War or our Vietnamese allies. (Generally the answer to all those questions was, “Not much.”) The flip side was that the distinction between the categories Not Blackhorse and Enemy got blurred. We didn’t view our job as winning hearts and minds: we were there to kill people and then go home. And we didn’t much care about the cost of victory so long as somebody else was paying it. That’s something civilians ought to consider long and hard before they send tanks off to make policy. Because I can tell you from personal experience, it isn’t something the tankers themselves are likely to worry about.”

Those are very sobering words. When men far from home---yoked to killing machines that would've seemed god-like just a few centuries ago--are given the task to kill or die in the name of [whatever], things can become very narrowly focused...and understandably so. Before someone enthroned in an ivory citadel makes the decision to unleash hell, they should ponder that. Mere 'pawns in chess'--as Geezer Butler would put it--have the irritating tendency to go their own way.

The waste, the misery, the inevitable damage to combatants and non-combatants...David Drake laid all that out. It helped me develop a healthy cynicism toward war--especially the modern variety--as well as toward those who are so happy to wage it as long as they don't have to get blood on their hands.

Of course, David's detractors would point out that he also made war 'sexy'. Drake did nothing of the sort. He simply showed warfare in the round. The problem is, war is sexy. Despite all the gore and stench, war confers status. "You're dead and I am alive," is about the starkest contrast in status one can imagine. Women flock to status and security like flies to honey. Men coming home from wars bring pay and perhaps plunder. They are implicitly 'better' than those who faced them and lost. At the end of the day, the only real guarantee of security is superior deployment of violence to enforce that security. As the proverb goes, "Violence is golden".

Drake's depictions of violence were noted for being graphic and realistic from the start of his career. He never let up noticeably at any point thereafter. For those already exposed to blood and mayhem--like myself--that made his stories ring more true and immersive. Whether he was writing about some Neolithic hunter or mercs a thousand years from now, Drake made you feel like you were there in the midst of it.

War is mass combat and combat is competition taken to its ultimate conclusion...and men are built to physically compete. "Steel sharpens steel", as the old adage goes. Every man has at some moment, however fleeting, wondered if he has what it takes when things come down to the Ultimate Test. Success in boxing/football/whatever can serve as a kind of rough proxy, but combat unto death is the only true arbiter. War is combat on a mass scale. The opportunities to face the Ultimate Test are multiplied.

There is also the concept of 'testing to destruction'. Every man needs to question just what his limits are and where his breaking point is. To some extent, the only way to truly know that is in an extreme situation like war. Going through such an experience in the company of others can be akin to a religious initiation. The individual is changed and shares a kind of brotherhood with men he might otherwise have never known or talked to. Drake addressed that in another essay:

"I’m still proud of my unit and the men I served with. They weren’t exactly my brothers, but they were the folks who were alone with me. Given the remarkably high percentage of those eligible who’ve joined the association of war-service Blackhorse veterans, my feelings are normal for the 11th Cav. Nobody who missed the Vietnam War should regret the fact. It was a waste of blood and time and treasure. It did no good of which I’m aware, and did a great deal of evil of which I’m far too aware. But having said that . . .
I rode with the Blackhorse."

As you can see, David didn't come away from his wartime experience undamaged. Far from it. Throughout his career, Drake brought up his psychic scars from the war and urged other veterans to seek help, if need be. He once told a podcaster that, if given the choice of no Vietnam stint and a life as a humble lawyer or being a veteran with a wildly successful career as an author, he would choose the first option every time. Maybe Nietzsche should have said: "What does not kill me will change me, for better or worse."

As you can see from both Drake quotes, despite his feelings as to why the Blackhorse was there, there is little doubt as to who and what he thought they were: an elite unit. Competent to an utterly lethal level. If you're gonna do the job, you might as well do it better than anybody else, whatever that might be. Many of Drake's protagonists are from that mold: damaged, but still highly competent and relentless in accomplishing the mission.

I suppose one could stretch that analogy to David and his writing career. He 'played hurt'--as my old football coach would say--for well over forty years, yet Drake dependably cranked out two novels a year between 1982 and 2002 and then produced a novel every year until 2019. Through it all, he was kind to fans and helpful to those wanting to republish works from Manly Wade Wellman or Carcosa Press.

On December 10, 2023, David laid down his sword and faded away, as old soldiers do. Salve atque vale.