Why does death seem more ironic when the chance of survival is close?

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

Why is that death seems somehow more costly, more bitter, when the chance of escape is tantalizingly close?

This is a bit about the last day of WW I:

At 7:15, an attack came; Bucher’s machine guns broke it up before the Americans facing him reached his barbed wire. His company’s casualties were light. One new recruit went down with a chemical burn. Bucher comforted him by telling him how much worse it could have been, how he could have lost his leg. “The youngster seemed, God knew why, to find comfort in my words,” Bucher wrote. At that moment, Bucher’s company commander returned, leaping along like a mad man, shouting “Cease fire at eleven a.m.. Pass the word along, cease fire at eleven.”

Hearing that, Bucher wrote, “all we could think of was how to survive the next three hours.” But within minutes, the neighboring section of the line came under artillery fire, though Bucher knew the Americans across no-man’s land must have heard the news too. Soldiers of proven courage began to waver, gathering their gear for flight. At 10:30, the wounded newcomer cheered up, calling out the time left. As he spoke, the allied artillery shifted aim, and began to shell Bucher’s position. Gas came next, and “everyone cowered in the shelters with clenched hands. The thought that death might overtake them a hundred times in that last half hour had completely unnerved them.” The shelling died down, and the gas lifted. Bucher and his company returned to the forward trench, grenades and rifles at the ready to repel any last charge. At ten minutes to the hour, he stared over the parapet, watching the shell smoke drift in the breeze. There was still just time for something to happen. Time ticked on. He stared at his watch. The hand moved. It was over.