During the Great War, the Ottoman armies suffered from very high rates of desertion as one out of every six soldiers mobilized deserted. Additionally, Ottoman military doctors charged that “tens of thousands” of conscripted soldiers feigned numerous illnesses, or malingered, to evade service. While we have asked why men deserted or simulated illness to escape war, we have not investigated what motivated those who remained as active and consenting participants and carried on with their fighting. What made them endure and go on even as they witnessed both the deaths of comrades, and the efforts of those who attempted to save themselves? This question is just as important as those about desertion, malingering, and evasion. After all, the majority of the men continued to fight even as they knew their chances of survival in the face of the enemy, disease, and hunger was very small. This paper investigates questions of motivation and morale among Ottoman soldiers to understand how they endured four years of brutal and relentless warfare that was the Great War. Out of necessity, the paper will mainly focus on the literate junior officers who left behind significant amount of unique sources, but the largely illiterate peasant soldiers will not be ignored. Some sergeants kept detailed diaries or wrote their war memoirs, where they wrote not only about themselves but also about the illiterate conscripts they led. Looking at both better educated officers and the barely educated soldiers will lend a comparative lens to this examination of motivation and morale. There is no denying that some men probably fought on because they could not do anything else short of desertion, but many others found motivation in religious or national sacrificial ideology of martyrdom. Why was the ideology of sacrifice for a greater cause appealing to some but not to others? It may be suggested that “secular” and religious notions of sacrifice survived through the conflict, but disillusionment in the war, its aims, and war-time leaders certainly gained enough ground to make some men question the worthiness of their sacrifice. This paper utilizes war diaries, memoirs, and hand-written troop “newspapers” left behind by Ottoman soldiers. The latter source is especially unique not only because they have hitherto been utilized only by the current presenter, but also because they provide direct access to the thoughts of officers and soldiers they deemed worthy of sharing with their comrades in arms.