Mars is the planet of fighting in every layer of the Western tradition, and the tradition is unusually consistent about what it means by that. Mars is hot and dry, the lesser of the two malefics, the malefic of the night sect, and the ruler of Aries and Scorpio. Its subjects are iron, fire, blood, wounds, surgery, soldiers, thieves, and everything done quickly and by force.
Lesser malefic is a technical rank rather than a judgement of severity. Saturn, the greater malefic, is cold and dry and does its damage by deprivation, delay and slow constriction. Mars does its damage by cutting, burning and haste. In a night chart Mars is of the sect in favour and its expression is more likely to be effective action than injury; in a day chart it is out of sect and the tradition expects the harsher reading. That is the sect doctrine again, and it is the single most useful correction a modern reader can apply to a textbook description of this planet.
Courage sits inside the same signification as violence, and the tradition does not treat that as a contradiction. Mars supplies the capacity to act against resistance, and whether it appears as bravery, as aggression or as surgery depends on the chart around it and on what the native is acting against.
The natural house of Mars is the sixth, where the tradition places its joy, among illness, labour and the daily attrition of a household.