This is indeed a question that can elicit whole books worth of replies. I'll make a couple of initial forays.
One, there are historical and cultural differences to take into account. What we learned as younguns in school cannot be pasted back into the past or across cultures. Each has to be considered in its own light. Indeed, even what was taught in "mainstream" schools doesn't translate well within our own subcultures.
So there's that.
Two, there's an important distinction to be made between the dominant culture, whatever it may be, and the individual soldier. Between, that is, individual motivations and cultural expectations or protestations. Any serious discussion needs to take that into account.
Just to take that last point a step further (then I'll stop for now), consider what an individual might consider to be good reasons for war and most especially for participating in war. "Glory" might be a factor, but there could be many others. Indeed, human beings are complicated creatures and we almost never do something big and serious for one reason only. We have layers of reasons, some of which might even be contradictory. More, we have a remarkable capacity to fool ourselves, so the soldier might say one thing, believe another, and believe something yet different that he is suppressing or denying or disguising.
This makes fertile ground for telling stories, but it makes writing history a challenge, especially when you start trying to deal not with individuals but with entire groups, classes, subcultures, and so on.
No easy answer to this one.
One, there are historical and cultural differences to take into account. What we learned as younguns in school cannot be pasted back into the past or across cultures. Each has to be considered in its own light. Indeed, even what was taught in "mainstream" schools doesn't translate well within our own subcultures.
So there's that.
Two, there's an important distinction to be made between the dominant culture, whatever it may be, and the individual soldier. Between, that is, individual motivations and cultural expectations or protestations. Any serious discussion needs to take that into account.
Just to take that last point a step further (then I'll stop for now), consider what an individual might consider to be good reasons for war and most especially for participating in war. "Glory" might be a factor, but there could be many others. Indeed, human beings are complicated creatures and we almost never do something big and serious for one reason only. We have layers of reasons, some of which might even be contradictory. More, we have a remarkable capacity to fool ourselves, so the soldier might say one thing, believe another, and believe something yet different that he is suppressing or denying or disguising.
This makes fertile ground for telling stories, but it makes writing history a challenge, especially when you start trying to deal not with individuals but with entire groups, classes, subcultures, and so on.
No easy answer to this one.