Warhammer 40K Lore: The Grist Of Humanity’s Mill
Gather ’round Loremasters, as we discuss the one inexhaustible resource that keeps the light of humanity blazing bright throughout the stars.
The great mill of humanity must ever churn, ensuring that the stars belong to the Imperium. And as you’ll see today Loremasters, and Loremaster-initiates, every part of the mill is important. From the craftsmen that carve the wood to make the wheel, to the engineers that design it–but perhaps most important of all is the grist–crushed into a fine pulp by the turning of the wheel to ensure that it’s all for something.
And bravely volunteering to be ground into a fine mist, sometimes literally, are none other than the brave men, women, and others of the Astra Militarum. The trillions who fling themselves into the galaxy’s teeth ensure that the trillions in the Imperium who are too valuable to serve as Guard are able to live a comfortable life. In celebration of these souls, we are here to commemorate their existence, not with poetry or song–their deaths are what is expected, and to feel any strong emotion about them would be to invoke heresy–but rather with a dry, factual explanation of what exactly a Guardsman is.
Guardsman is the generic term for any member of the Imperial Guard, regardless of rank, but is also synonymous with the lowest enlisted rank of Trooper. There are untold billions upon billions of Guardsmen in service, such that even the Departmento Munitorum has no idea of the true number of Guardsmen in existence. These are normal men and women of the Imperium, called upon to serve the God-Emperor of Mankind and protect His realm against all threats. That they do so against a galaxy full of eldritch horrors, foul xenos and other nameless terrors is a heroic testament to their courage.
The recruitment (or conscription) and training of each Guardsman is based entirely on the customs and traditions of their native homeworld, a result of the tithe imposed on each Planetary Governor. Just as there are a million worlds in the Imperium so too are there a million ways one can become a Guardsman; for many it is considered an honour to join the Guard, or at least a way to escape a wretched existence. The result are Guardsmen as wildly different from each other as possibly, from highly-trained professional soldiers to savage gang-fighters and medieval barbarians. If any additional training is required, especially among primitive recruits with little to no knowledge of how to work modern weapons of war, it will be given in transit to their initial deployment.
Guardsmen fulfill every conceivable role within the Imperial Guard, from tank crewmen to snipers, vox-operators to medics. As laid out in the Tactica Imperium, the basic organisational unit most Guardsmen will fight under is the squad, a number of which will form into a platoon. Several platoons will make up a company which in turn make up a regiment. While such standards do exist, they are not uniformly followed for any number of reasons, leading to formations of different names, sizes and compositions.
Medics and Field Chiurgeons are Guardsmen trained to give medical treatment to wounded in the field in the heat of combat. They typically operate out of Company Command Squads.[5f] Medics go by many different names, but all are trained in providing first response and frontline medical care to injured Guardsmen. They are also equally combat-capable and will fight shoulder-to-shoulder with their fellow squad-mates.
Standard Bearers are Guardsmen who due to battlefield gallantry have been rewarded with the honor of holding the Company or Regimental Standard. Typically operating out of Company Command Squads, the Standard Bearer serves as a reminder for the rest of the Company to fight with duty and honor.
Vox-Operators are Guardsmen who operate Vox communication systems in the field, allowing for improved communications and coordination between Company, Platoon, and Squad commands.
Special Weapons Gunners are Guardsmen armed with a variety of specialized weapons such as Plasma Guns, Heavy Bolters, Meltaguns, and Flamers. They typically operate out of Heavy Weapons Squads or Special Weapons Squads.
Hardened Veterans are something of an anomaly, when a particular trooper appears to be martyr-resistant, in spite of their best efforts. As regiments fight grueling campaigns that last for years on end, eventually they will shrink in size as the number of casualties rises. In many cases an entire company will be reduced to a single squad of the most battle-tested, hardcore Guardsmen blessed with the strength and will to survive the nightmarish battlefields of the 41st Millennium. These Hardened Veterans are experts in all aspects of warfare, from marksmanship to demolition work, and carry a variety of non-standard weapons and equipment. Some regiments may have whole companies of battle-born killers, having survived the grim realities of warfare relatively unscathed. In many cases however these lone squads of hardened survivors will be attached to other regiments, often newly-formed ones, in the hope that their skills will be assimilated by their new parent unit. The Catachan Jungle Fighters do not contain Hardened Veterans as elite troops, instead their standard soldiers are considered to be the equivalent, having grown up and survived on the galaxy’s deadliest planet.
Heavy Gunners are Guardsmen specialized to operate heavy weapons such as Lascannons, Missile Launchers, Mortars, and Heavy Flamers. They often operate in Heavy Weapon Squads.
There is more, of course, but to say more about the grist of humanity’s mill would be to ennoble them too much and may inadvertently lead to a reluctance to shed their lives as the Emperor demands, so we’ll leave it there.
Remember to report cowardice!
