They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.

The speaker juxtaposes brutal, dehumanizing battlefield imagery (“savage,” “filthy,” “lousy,” “stunk”) with an unexpected declaration of affection (“And I loved them”). Read as a war-memory utterance, it conveys the paradox of combat leadership: intimate proximity to suffering and death can produce a fierce, protective attachment even amid revulsion and horror. The simile “like wounded wolves at bay” emphasizes desperate courage and the instinct to fight when cornered, suggesting admiration for endurance rather than romanticizing war. The final sentence functions as a moral jolt, implying that love in war is not sentimental but forged through shared extremity, pity, and respect for men who endure the unendurable.