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Ursarkar Creed
Written By: Sergeant Karls, 204th Hirian
Non-Fiction
"So. Fresh bunch'a recruits straight off the regimental home world, huh? Got your heads full of propaganda and not much else, lemme bet. Well, listen to me and listen good, kids - probably half of what you know is nothing but ambull-shit, and you'd better get that through your heads now rather than getting a traitor's lasbolt through your head on the battlefield. Now, you pray to the Emperor like you should, and if you don't the Commissar'll blow your head off, and that'll be a mercy compared to what I'll do to ya if I find out 'fore he does - but don't be thinkin' for a second that recitin' the Litany of Protection makes you invulnerable on a battlefield.***Sure, you'll hear stories about brave Guardsmen that charged enemy positions armed with nothin' but their lasguns and their bayonets and won - and I'll even admit that probably a couple of them are true, but in an army that numbers in the billions one or two of ya are bound to get lucky every now and again, so it don't really say much. No, kids, they might make for inspirin' stories, but fanatical charges aren't what win battles. Battles are won by determination and tactics. Lemme tell you about this one time our regiment was servin' under the command of General Creed. ***Never a finer tactician has the Imperial Guard ever seen than that General Creed, let me tell you. He came up with plans so devious and cunnin' you didn't even have a hope of figurin' out how he'd done what he'd done 'less he explained it to ya himself. We were fightin' on Kavara IV, what'd used to be a good Imperial world till the taint of Chaos found its way down there and turned loyal citizens into traitorous scum. At the time we'd been shipped off, we thought we were just gonna be helping the local PDF put down a small insurrection, but what with the ways of the warp by the time we got there it'd turned into a full on rebel uprisin' and all the nobles were already dead or in hidin', and another army led by General Creed had arrived to bring it back under control - we'd been missin' so long they thought we'd been lost to the warp, you see, and sent another off in our place - so we wound up joinin' forces an' bolsterin' their ranks.***Now, we got deployed into one of the urban centers that'd been taken over almost entirely by the heretics, goin' through clearing buildings of resistance and tightenin' the noose around their filthy necks. Only been gettin' minor resistance until a couple of hours in, when we stumbled across a fortified plaza that hadn't been in none of the intelligence reports. So there we were, pinned down by enemy fire, usin' rubble for cover and hopin' to the Emperor that'd we get some artillery support soon, when all of a sudden there's a tremendous rumblin' off to the right, soundin' like a column of tanks comin' up towards the buildin' we'd just cleared.*** We weren't gettin' nothin' about armored support on the vox, so we was sittin' there shittin' ourselves wonderin' where the traitors had got tanks from, when all of a sudden the front of the buildin' just collapses out onto the street and a damn Baneblade rolls right on out in front of us. One blast from the main gun and it turned the heretic's position into a crater. The vox lights up and we get ourselves a message - "Armored Support courtesy of General Creed", they say. Now that's tactics, kids - we never saw it comin', so those traitors sure didn't. The application of overwhelmin' force at just the right spot at just the right moment'll turn the tide of any battle in your favor.*** I took a look at that buildin' again as we were marchin' down the street in the Baneblade's wake, though. Funniest thing, the only hole in it was the one the tank'd made on its way out. How the hell we missed it when we were clearin' the place I don't know. How the hell Creed got it in there in the first place, I'm not sure I WANT to know - but let me tell you, pulling that off must've taken one hell of a tactical genius.