Is it really possible for someone to find motivation to risk their lives to fight for a paycheck? See: pretty much all of history. Generals routinely promised

Is it really possible for someone to find motivation to risk their lives to fight for a paycheck? See: pretty much all of history. Generals routinely promised wealth from invasion of neighboring places. In fact, rare is the case where the promise for fighting in a large scale war was not one of wealth, but of some derivative resource ( freedom, religious reasons, pride ). That is a relatively recent construct (maybe last 200 years).