Well i think here you have two important factors wen it comes to cultural interpretation of war and death applied to dwarves.
First of all the setting of the story is a world that has a lot of fighting and wars, due to demons, goblins and other races. And dwarves in particular seem to me like the more warlike culture from the three "good" mayor races (dwarves, humans and elves), they also appear to be proud yet in a brute way, while you would expect an elf to insult you, you would expect a dwarf to beat you up with his hammer/axe.
Second, its the whole idea of diferent religions, yes, as you say kogan there where some "warrior cultures", the best example i think, would be the vikings, they believed that they had to die in battle to go to heaven where they would be welcomed with a feast, however i think there is also an important factor wen it comes to dwarves. They have many gods, each with their particular characteristics, and i think this is a really important factor, somone who believes in the god of peace should at least get an unhappy feeling from being in the military, but someone who believes in a god of war and glory, NEEDS to be in the military, and would in fact send himself into suicide attack without worries (you should look up what the therm berserk means for more info on this subject, its pretty interesting)
That said, there is also something else i noticed, wich i didnt mention in my other post due to time issues, i see a lot of talking about escaping or refusing to fight, but little about confidence, charisma, anger and fear.
There is something that bothers me a little about df and its the lack of leder positions, we have the mayor but it dosnt matter how charismatic or skilled he is, he does little interaction, and here comes the role of the military command.Its not just about causing fear in the soldiers, as i said before, its also about trust, if a soldier feels attached to his commander he will probably follow any order, even wen it means death, and not only that, he should fight in a more comfortable way, knowing that his leader is watching his back and would not risk his life for nothing, speech is an important thing here too, a good leader should know how to raise the spirits of his troops.
And here comes another subject, confidence, if a soldier has confidence that they are going to win, or that they are the last hope, or they hate their enemy for whatever reason (cultural and historical events could play a major role on this subject) they would fight in a diferent way, with confidence they will be colder, knowing what they do, fighting with better technique, while in anger they would be maybe stronger, more resilient, even more intimidating, but they would pay much less attention to how they are fighting, making it a lot easier for an enemy to take a lucky shot.
Finally comes fear, someone scared of their enemy would not only run away, in some cases they might stay, but fight with less security, wich means less effectivity, the contrary should be possible too i think, sometimes after suffering so much they may loose all fear making it impossible to really scare them.
In the end i think an escaping soldier should be something REALLY strange, something you see once in a long long while, an extreme, kinda like a tantrum. On the other hand i think soldiers should change their way of fighting according to their emotional situation, making them stronger, smarter or weaker depending of battle. I think their emotional situation should change based on, a little bit of their own personality, their superior, their religion, and the legal punishments (wich in my opinion, the player should choose, if you want a violent culture you would make the punishment for escaping death, while if you think they should be peacefull maybe they wont get punished, and all the options that are between those two)