Jonah, call me old-fashioned, but I think that the purpose of an army is to wage war. With the important exception of the unit cohesion point that I mentioned above, I am at a loss to understand as to why adultery is something that should be something that is prohibited under military law. As to the notion that combat troops would be shocked (shocked!) by the notion that some of their fellow soldiers might be free (at least under military law) to, as you put it, ‘boink’ other men’s wives, I’d suggest that this is something infinitely more removed from reality than anything that we “cosmopolitan” libertarians could ever come up with.

Out of curiosity though. If you’d been in charge, and those rules had applied (I’m unfamiliar with what British military law actually had to say on this topic) would you have cashiered the Iron Duke or sunk Admiral Nelson? Indeed would you have rallied behind the fair Mamie and canned that disreputable Ike?