The DSO was usually awarded for outstanding leadership in battle. Thus COs and company commanders were the main recipients, more senior officers in exceptional circumstances. They were all, however, most certainly in harms way.
Don't forget, also, that the MBE/OBEs are divided into military and civilian divisions. In no way, therefore, is a civilian MBE awarded to a footballer comparable to one awarded to someone in the Forces. My father, a doctor, was awarded a military MBE for volunteering to run a cholera isolation unit (you couldn't call it a hospital because there was no medicine or instruments) in the Burmese jungle as a POW of the Japs. He earned his more than I earned my technically more senior effort from GW1.