Keith could also be a coward. Mary's playing with fire here

Mary Worth, 11/5/23

Wow, I guess all it takes is a little rejection from from his hitherto unknown daughter and long-ago ex girlfriend to get Keith to start spilling his guts to Mary, even though mere days ago he deemed her a busybody and tried his hardest to avoid her. Now, Mary is a lady who has repeatedly told women that they should work harder to maintain a relationship with Wilbur Weston, so I guess her advice to Keith to keep fighting isn't surprising. I do question her tactics here, though. She doesn't know anything about Keith's service record. What if in one battle, after being pushed back by enemy forces, his unit had advanced again, only to be repulsed due to a lack of sufficient air support, with all his comrades in arms dying and leaving him with emotional wounds that will never heal? Or what if, despite the immediate success of the individual missions he participated in, Keith came to view the larger conflict as a misguided one, a waste of lives and ammunition for an unworthy cause? Why, he might not work his hardest to force his way into fatherhood at all, and that's wholly unacceptable!

Hagar the Horrible, 11/5/23