The literary side of military life is one too often overlooked. The Defense Department's huge public relations staff, the Steve Canyon comic strip it encourages, and the books it distributes to its troops all attest to the fact that military men recognize the power of the pen.

In the world of books, the Army has shown itself to be the leader among the armed services. Unlike the more excitable Air Force, which once published a manual accusing large blocs of Protestant ministers of Communist leanings, the Army encourages solid literary achievement. Air Force pamphleteers, like the Grace Metaliouses of the civilian sphere, may enjoy a brief notoriety. But Army books are more likely to end up on the shelves of serious collectors.

Two Army classics which have enjoyed a wide circulation are FM 21-13, Department of the Army Field Manual: The Soldier's Guide, and The Combat Leader's Field Guide. The reader should not be put off by the austerity of their titles, for each of these books is a masterpiece of the field manual genre, written in a distinctive style.

FM 21-13 is as epic in scope as the Army itself. It includes chapters on Military Science, Individual Interests, The Soldier's Code, and Army History and Organization. The anonymous author underestimates himself when he advises his readers merely to "use this book somewhat as a dyed-in-the-wool baseball fan uses his official baseball guide--to look up facts and broaden your information on specific subjects."

The historical approach is a distinguishing mark of the book. A section on the history of the Army, "175 Years of Fighting," begins by saying, "First off, we had better give a brief fill-in of the more important wars in which our Army has taken part," and ends with "You've just read about the shortest history of the Army ever written. It doesn't even hit the high spots." This kind of historical analysis, however, is not limited to the strictly historical section alone. In a subsection of the chapter on communications, for instance, the author attributes the fall of the First French Empire to a lack of rapid communication between Napoleon and his lieutenants.

The author is not without a sense of humor. At one point he defines the "Four F's of Fighting" as "FIND 'EM, FIX 'EM, FIGHT 'EM, and FINISH 'EM!" The sly absence of the obvious "Fifth F" is highly amusing.

If the style of FM 21-13 is most influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr and Pat Boone, the style of The Combat Leader's Field Guide is derived primarily from Ernest Hemingway. Consider this passage from a section on probing for mines: "Echelon men 15 to 25 M to minimize casualties." This tone of taut realism is characteristic of the book. Its author, also anonymous, gives these instructions for testing for the presence of poison gas: "Nerve agents being quick killers, make test with detectors, then have 2 or 3 men unmask for 5 min.... If no symptoms, unmask."

This pulls no punches; this is life. Only once does the author lapse into sentimentalism, when he says that the American Fighting Man must "trust in my God and in the United States of America." But even Hemingway had his weaknesses.