What do men want?

[DanaC]

Seems largely to hold true for the 18th/19th century British army.

Given the dynamic of lots of trained, armed men hanging about for long periods of inactivity in camps, there seems surprisingly little serious violence between soldiers of similar rank and service. Obviously, there's a level of day to day violence that doesn't make it into the justice records - dealt with summarily by officers, or self-policed through company structures. But they don't appear to have been any more violent amongst themselves than a comparable civilian population of the day.

Non-comms, though. They're a different story. So far I am getting the distinct impression that NCOs were disproportionately victims of violence.