Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

As part of my current novel writing project I'm attempting to re-read Dorsai(!) by Gordon R. Dickson.  The reason is that I plan on basing some of the bad guys on the Dorsai mercenaries.  And while I am having some difficulties due to vision problems and brain damage it is clearly a badly written novel.  In fact I'm left to wonder how it could ever have been published to begin with.