Gramp Parker pounded the table with his fist.
'We fit you and we licked you,' he yelled, 'and I don't give a 'tarnal dang how we come to do it. If your generals had been so all-fired smart, how come we licked the stuffin' out of you?'
Jurg Tec, a doddering old Martian, pounded the table back at Gramp.
'You Earthians won that battle by pure luck,' he squeaked and his squeak was full of honest rage.
'You had no right to win. By all the rules of warfare you were beaten from the start. Your strategy was wrong. Your space division was wrong, your timing was wrong. Alexander, when he brought his cruisers down to attack our camp, should have been wiped out.'
'But he wasn't,' Gramp yelped.
'Just luck,' Jurg Tec squeaked back. 'Fight that battle over again and the Martians would win.
Something went wrong. Something that historians can't explain. Work it out on paper and Mars wins every time.'
Gramp pounded the table with both fists. His beard twitched belligerently.
'But dang your ornery hide,' he screamed, 'battles ain't fit on paper. They're fit with men and ships and guns. And men count most. The men with guts are the ones who win. And battles ain't fit over, neither. There ain't no second chance in war. You either win or lose and there ain't no rain checks handed out.'