Comment by akiselev

That's a well studied topic in military history/science called unit cohesion. The saying goes that morale gets the soldiers to the battlefield, cohesion is what keeps them there. In order to withstand the psychological horrors of combat, soldiers need that comradery otherwise they'll run off at the first chance they get. There needs to be some anchor keeping the soldier in the way of danger, whether that's social pressure or years of intense training together.

Brett Devereaux has talked about it multiple times on his blog in various different contexts (most recently two weeks ago)[1][2][3]:

[1] https://acoup.blog/2026/07/24/collections-pre-modern-armies-...

[2] https://acoup.blog/2022/07/01/collections-total-generalship-...

[3] https://acoup.blog/tag/cohesion/