Reasons for joining

[KARTLOS]

with british soldiers it was a generally a feeling of altruism, they generally wanted to make the world world a better place. Whether it was the frenchy, the zulu or the hun there was alot of wrong uns out there who needed to be put in there place.

[Trax]

Often the soldiers had the feeling of fatalism beaten and preached into them..
"You are not going to die unless it is the Gods will" and "There is a marked bullet for everyone, when your time comes it desn't matter where you are, it's going to hit you"

[macsen rufus]

War was also extremely glorified, in fact war was glorified until the end of World War 1.

For many volunteers in WWI, it seems as though they may have expected something more like a cricket match. In an age lacking the mass media we take for granted, just how many really understood, before it was too late, the real nature of what they were getting into? Certainly propaganda and nationalistic fervour played their part, as did the prospects of booty, regular meals and "adventure". Also, I'm sure everybody expected they'd be on the winning side.

Besides the blatant jingoistic retruitment drives, there were also rather devious ones. I don't know how it might have operated in other countries, but Britain certainly had press-gangs for the navy, who could (and did) just grab people off the street, or out of the pub. For the army there was the "King's Shilling" - a small fortune at the time, I'm sure, for the average working/non-working man. Normally paid out conventionally upon signing up, it was also used deviously by slipping it into a man's drink unawares - if he then drank that drink he was deemed to have accepted the King's Shilling, and was an enlisted man. Due to this practice, glass-bottomed tankards became popular!

[Randarkmaan]

I would expect a platoon (or whatever a such a group was called) to try to gait the soldiers they faced to fire to early and then close the gap quickly and fire while the enemy was reloading.

Like in the Patriot where the British march against the Americans, get fired on one time by the Americans, get within close range and fire one devastating volley, breaking them. When marching the soldiers just look like their looking out at nothing in particular and trying not to think. That scene is one of the things I like about that movie. Also love the fact that they play "British Grenadiers".