Learning is not putting your life on the line, but real learning is hard and doing the hardest work Hashem wants from a Jew, to work on himself. What more can you ask for?! Those bochurim are doing what Hashem created them to do, exactly his will. How can you compete?
In the times of the tanach thw soldiers had to be big talmudi chachamim, not just anyone who decided to put his life on the line.