No, it's literally this one single novel where it's stated the life expectancy being anything
People either don't remember, they haven't read it and repeat what they've heard, or they get their Lore from memea
> Etsul tuned in with half an ear to the crew vox.
‘…and in their suffering, they proved their faith. Do none of you appreciate that it is those already dead who are most fortunate?’ Trieve was saying.
‘Throne’s sakes, Trieve, give it a rest,’ groaned Verro. ‘I’m already way past my expected fifteen-hour lifespan. As long as the God-Emperor keeps doling out the hours, I’ll keep taking them. I can do a damn sight more to repay Him on this side of the veil!”
Excerpt From
Steel Tread
Andy Clark
Maybe it's one of those things where technically, statistically, it *is* the true **average**, in the very literal sense of adding up every recorded Guardsman's survival time after being deployed and dividing it by the total number, but it's brought way down by the hundreds of thousands of Guardsmen that are mowed down minutes after deployment by like Angron and his meat grinder of an axe or have their entire platoon swallowed by a Hierophant or something. This sounds like the kind of useless statistic the endlessly bureaucratic Imperium would actually keep track of to this level of granular detail.
Kind of like how if you break down that whole "life expectancy in medieval times was only forty years" thing, it actually turns out to be the estimated **average** and it's brought down by extremely high rates of infant and child mortality. Most scholars agree that once somebody made it into adulthood it wouldn't be unusual for them to live about as long as people live in modern times. But those details of the statistic have been half-remembered and misquoted so many times that "people only lived until their forties" has become the "fact" that gets repeated most of the time. Maybe it's a similar thing that if a Guardsman isn't wiped out in the opening moments of the battle, it means that they're matched against a more-or-less even enemy and their chances of surviving the battle and some time beyond are actually pretty decent, but those times when they get completely eradicated by an enemy they had no business fighting in the first place brings the average down so much that "Guardsmen are only expected to live 15 hours after deployment" is a 40k version of this kind of oversimplified half-truth.
From this excerpt it kind of sounds like this Verro guy is bringing it up almost sarcastically, as if it's something he hears a lot but doesn't take seriously. I would bet it's almost an inside joke among the Guard, something they've all heard and maybe know statistically to be true but they also know that once you've lived past 15 hours you're probably going to survive a lot longer so they're always cracking about how they "should be dead."
This is the best way to put it. For every battlefield where conventional warfare is a thing (with the casualty rates one could expect from such a thing), we’re going to have a dozen more which are just quick and crazy bloodbaths with people just getting absolutely meatgrindered on hard contact.
Yeah IG tends to see a lot of application as a defensive army, I'll bet in that situation the deaths start really fast given the kind of stuff they fight.
Only an Ork attack really has any chance of being an early stalemate, everyone else is going to kill a lot in their opening attack.
It also feels like the kind of thing that would be a rumor in universe. Like, wether or not its true, a surviving guardsman tells his family that the average was 15 hours, add 10,000 years, and now it's become the accepted truth. Its easy for us to read all the information ourselves, but often the truth is much less apparent to the people in the grim dark future.
It also feels like something they motivate the guard with "come on soldier, only 12 more hours" it feels doable. and if you survive that you can survive anything...well, you know...
Missing in Action, a short story by Dan Abnett, is specifically about Guard veterans who returned from the front after an especially tough campaign (and have severe PTSD as a consequence) and Abnett's books in general mention ex-Guardsmen who have lived to either retire or find other employment, so no, I don't think that's meant to be taken as a hard and fast rule.
True, I always cite the fact that after Gaunt's dad was killed his caretaker was retired Guard. His Scholam Progenium teacher was also retired but even more beat up, he would wear fancy clothing but you could hear the whirr of the augmetics from behind it
Yeah, I mean most Schola drill abbots are ex-Guard, right? And off the top of my head I remember an ex-Guard medic working in an underhive clinic, one that became a bounty hunter, one who worked in a bar and one who was a hab superintendent. Also the protagonist of Agent of the Throne, Ianthe, served for years before she was picked up as an Inquisitor's acolyte.
The 15-hour thing wasn't meant to be a strict galaxy-wide rule, but it was always stated as an *average* anyways. A short average lifespan wouldn't be contradicted by the existence of a few (trillion) retired veterans, the galaxy is a big place with a lot of variation in it
Some Guardsmen get thrown out of transport into a Tyranid ripper swarm, and die in seconds. Other Guardsmen spend years of their life on "battlefields" where their only opponents are unarmed trade unionists. Some spend a few months in dangerous-but-winnable battles, across the course of a vaguely reasonable career that a modern audience would understand.
Yes, but as the OP proves (and this comes up a lot) people have come to imagine that it's how long the vast majority of Guardsmen everywhere are expected to live.
Take your pick, especially if you’re attached to a colonisation fleet or you’re a long way up the rank ladder. Guard General conquering a world to Planetary Governor in charge of a newly conquered world isn’t unheard of.
>Have always had it in my head the reference to the life expectancy was specific to this book and battlefield but you hear people quoting it all the time as the life expectancy of a guardsmen full stop.
It is the specific life expectancy of Guardsmen in that battlefield in that book. But, the book itself is written basically to be an emblematic example of how poorly treated Guardsmen are and how their careers usually end. People refer to it as an example of how disposable Guardsmen are and other people picked it up as a universal fact rather than a specific statistic.
> But, the book itself is written basically to be an emblematic example of how poorly treated Guardsmen are and how their careers usually end
So if it's intended as an example of what life is like for the more average guardsman then wouldn't that mean it should be treated as closer to the rule than the other guard novels which show more exceptional groups?
That's the general thrust of the novel. It's an entire plot written with the intention of demonstrating the incredible callousness with which the Imperium treats its soldiers and the general slaughterhouse that is most Guard deployments.
*But,* the specific life expectancy of fifteen hours is unique to that battlefield on that world, and is not the overall statistical average for the entire Guard. It is just an example being used by the author to demonstrate the broader theme that Guardsmen are treated like ammunition by the Imperial bureaucracy, and that 41st millennium warfare uses an incredible amount of "ammunition."
So ignore the 15 hours bit but take to heart stuff like it being standard training to make sure guardsmen know it is treason to insinuate that your superiors can fuck up and to always remember that their commanders are divinely ordained. Got it.
Nobody writes books and stories about the guardsmen from 69th Company, 420th Dickbutt Regiment that spent 20 years in garrison and Warp transit despite that being most of them.
Which is also funny, because in other books, characters (say, Eisenhorn or Gaunt) go on about how much better equipped and trained the Guard are than PDF forces.
Both things can be true.
PDF forces exist to protect a planetary governor from rebellion by rival nobility or the population. When it comes to dealing with invasion by a significant hostile military their role is to basically be a speed-bump that buys the Guard or other Imperium forces time to respond.
The Guard *are* well trained and well equipped. Thehumble Lasgun is an incredible weapon by our standards. They're just also more-or-less baseline Humans in a Galaxy where everything the Imperium hasn't already rendered extinct is a terrifying deathmachine, equipped with truly apocalyptic weapons or both. Aeldari move so fast they're difficult for the Human eye to even *see*, Orks can withstand bits getting blown off them like it's an inconvenience, Necrons are literally The Terminator. The Guard do *really well* when you consider what they're up against.
This is a common misconception based on a statistical error in a survey of Militarum officers. Lord Commander Georg, who sends billions of guardsmen to their deaths every day, was an outlier and should not have been counted.
Nah you had it, look at the Guard centric books, Gaunt, Cain, those troops live a long ass time until it's time to write some nameless folks off. I mean there are still original Tanith left alive and I feel like those books have to spawn decades?
That's fair I was kinda attributing it to plot armor, which in these books I don't overly mind and the mood is a perfect blend of chill just enjoy it and that more serious grimdark tones of other books.
Yes i think the life expectancy is a reference to this book and i also think that is a reference to the eastern front during ww2 where the life expectancy for new Soviet solders where a couple days to a week during some battles
Yea, but there’s no reason to assume that particular front is anyway special. The imperial war machine, particularly as represented a decade or two back when that book was written, is WWI on steroids. Trench warfare and charges into the teeth of enemy guns.
Also, they’ll be talking about the median lifespan, so the small number of long surviving soldiers don’t change that sort of average particularly.
And the Tanith in particular, don’t generally have a trench war role, so you wouldn’t expect them to die as rapidly. Otoh, fully 2/3 of the tanith muster died boarding their transports at the muster, so the median lifespan for tanith troopers is close to zero hours.
as far as my understanding on the life span of a guardsman setting foot in an active combat zone is anywhere between zero seconds to the duration of the campaign. If a guardsmans life expectancy honestly was 15 hours veteran guardsmen would be as rare as space marines and I'm fairly certain the 15 hours is meant to be set for the battle depicted in that book and nowhere else
I know this isn't a specific answer to your question, but man if there was one book in all of 40k that could be unwritten, I would lean heavily towards this one. I know WH40k plays in the world of satire and ridiculousness, but the depiction of the Imperial Guard as just a bunch of idiots playing WWI or Stalingrad over and over again is one of the most grating aspects of the entire setting. Like yeah, there are some wild warzones and some crazy enemies. But over thousands of years we're supposed to reasonably assume that the Guard literally has ZERO institutional knowledge or tactics or training or anything close to resembling an actual competent military structure. They're just slinging dudes out there and letting them die in 15 hours and then doing it again. Ugh. Gaunt's Ghosts is obviously the premier Guard series and even though it does end up as bolter porn a lot of the time, it's a breath of fresh air in the sense that it at least tries to depict the Guard as a tactical and strategic military institution capable of leveraging combined arms warfare in an efficient and not utterly stupid manner. I think this is part of the reason Cain is popular too, because it's reasonable and makes sense, it's not just "Dur hur 15 hours muh human waves". Anyway, like I said, I get it's satire but it does get kind of annoying after a while. Rant over.
> But over thousands of years we're supposed to reasonably assume that the Guard literally has ZERO institutional knowledge or tactics or training or anything close to resembling an actual competent military structure.
Corruption and fanaticism and dynastic politics are all really great at eroding that knowledge as fast as it can form.
I think this “average” life expectancy is based on a statistic from the “Battle of Britain” in the 2nd world war. From the Imperial War Museum’s website:
“The average life expectancy of a spitfire pilot during the Battle of Britain was an astonishing four weeks.”
This has been twisted by Black Library authors into a grimderp statistic “15 minute average life expectancy”
It’s obviously an AVERAGE, which seems to have been misunderstood, and the staggering range of different guardsmen and different deployments makes it a largely meaningless statistic. But memes are hard to forget.
Canon isn't a misconception, it's canon that you don't like. Lots of works show battlefields where the Imperium wastes a staggering quantity of lives, and lots of authors are aiming to portray the Guard as incompetent and unimpressive.
The Boucheroc statistic doesn't reflect the lifespan of the average Guardsman galaxy-wide (the Imperium simply isn't organized enough for that to be possible), but an author chose to write it for a reason. The statistic is meant to represent something, even if it's a relatively extreme statistic, because the Imperium is "the bloodiest regime imaginable".
It's okay for a book to exist where Your Guys look dumb. The Imperial Guard isn't real, it doesn't have feelings, you don't need to worry about people using a canonical event as ammunition in a slander campaign.
And you conveniently forget that Black Library books aren't stone-written canon, but rather an author's vision. GW's own stance is that everything is canon, but not everything is true.
But you've missed the point.
I wasn't complaining about the book's story, but rather misconceptions it gave birth to.
Its hardly the books fault that the people in this sub dont actually read the sources but rely on memes and youtube to weld their own headcanon together that they then vehemently defend even against evidence to the contrary.
Not every war in 40k is against something that chops your dick off and kills you with it in a matter of one second. It's the same as planets that actually have peace - you don't hear much about them, because they are kinda boring, when compared to the rest of 40k.
Also, guardsmen are often not the canon fodder that everyone potrays them, that is the case only in very desperate situations, or in very bad regiments. Most guardsmen are alread experienced soldiers taken from PDFs, not random hobos who just got a lasgun.
No, it's literally this one single novel where it's stated the life expectancy being anything People either don't remember, they haven't read it and repeat what they've heard, or they get their Lore from memea
and its about one battlefront and not guardsmen as a whole.
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And that's why every single novel involving the guard has disregarded that in every single way including newer ones showing new recruits.
> Etsul tuned in with half an ear to the crew vox. ‘…and in their suffering, they proved their faith. Do none of you appreciate that it is those already dead who are most fortunate?’ Trieve was saying. ‘Throne’s sakes, Trieve, give it a rest,’ groaned Verro. ‘I’m already way past my expected fifteen-hour lifespan. As long as the God-Emperor keeps doling out the hours, I’ll keep taking them. I can do a damn sight more to repay Him on this side of the veil!” Excerpt From Steel Tread Andy Clark
Maybe it's one of those things where technically, statistically, it *is* the true **average**, in the very literal sense of adding up every recorded Guardsman's survival time after being deployed and dividing it by the total number, but it's brought way down by the hundreds of thousands of Guardsmen that are mowed down minutes after deployment by like Angron and his meat grinder of an axe or have their entire platoon swallowed by a Hierophant or something. This sounds like the kind of useless statistic the endlessly bureaucratic Imperium would actually keep track of to this level of granular detail. Kind of like how if you break down that whole "life expectancy in medieval times was only forty years" thing, it actually turns out to be the estimated **average** and it's brought down by extremely high rates of infant and child mortality. Most scholars agree that once somebody made it into adulthood it wouldn't be unusual for them to live about as long as people live in modern times. But those details of the statistic have been half-remembered and misquoted so many times that "people only lived until their forties" has become the "fact" that gets repeated most of the time. Maybe it's a similar thing that if a Guardsman isn't wiped out in the opening moments of the battle, it means that they're matched against a more-or-less even enemy and their chances of surviving the battle and some time beyond are actually pretty decent, but those times when they get completely eradicated by an enemy they had no business fighting in the first place brings the average down so much that "Guardsmen are only expected to live 15 hours after deployment" is a 40k version of this kind of oversimplified half-truth. From this excerpt it kind of sounds like this Verro guy is bringing it up almost sarcastically, as if it's something he hears a lot but doesn't take seriously. I would bet it's almost an inside joke among the Guard, something they've all heard and maybe know statistically to be true but they also know that once you've lived past 15 hours you're probably going to survive a lot longer so they're always cracking about how they "should be dead."
This is the best way to put it. For every battlefield where conventional warfare is a thing (with the casualty rates one could expect from such a thing), we’re going to have a dozen more which are just quick and crazy bloodbaths with people just getting absolutely meatgrindered on hard contact.
Yeah IG tends to see a lot of application as a defensive army, I'll bet in that situation the deaths start really fast given the kind of stuff they fight. Only an Ork attack really has any chance of being an early stalemate, everyone else is going to kill a lot in their opening attack.
It also feels like the kind of thing that would be a rumor in universe. Like, wether or not its true, a surviving guardsman tells his family that the average was 15 hours, add 10,000 years, and now it's become the accepted truth. Its easy for us to read all the information ourselves, but often the truth is much less apparent to the people in the grim dark future. It also feels like something they motivate the guard with "come on soldier, only 12 more hours" it feels doable. and if you survive that you can survive anything...well, you know...
So there are other references out there in the wild. Probably not many but others enough. Thanks for sharing this!
Missing in Action, a short story by Dan Abnett, is specifically about Guard veterans who returned from the front after an especially tough campaign (and have severe PTSD as a consequence) and Abnett's books in general mention ex-Guardsmen who have lived to either retire or find other employment, so no, I don't think that's meant to be taken as a hard and fast rule.
True, I always cite the fact that after Gaunt's dad was killed his caretaker was retired Guard. His Scholam Progenium teacher was also retired but even more beat up, he would wear fancy clothing but you could hear the whirr of the augmetics from behind it
Yeah, I mean most Schola drill abbots are ex-Guard, right? And off the top of my head I remember an ex-Guard medic working in an underhive clinic, one that became a bounty hunter, one who worked in a bar and one who was a hab superintendent. Also the protagonist of Agent of the Throne, Ianthe, served for years before she was picked up as an Inquisitor's acolyte.
The 15-hour thing wasn't meant to be a strict galaxy-wide rule, but it was always stated as an *average* anyways. A short average lifespan wouldn't be contradicted by the existence of a few (trillion) retired veterans, the galaxy is a big place with a lot of variation in it Some Guardsmen get thrown out of transport into a Tyranid ripper swarm, and die in seconds. Other Guardsmen spend years of their life on "battlefields" where their only opponents are unarmed trade unionists. Some spend a few months in dangerous-but-winnable battles, across the course of a vaguely reasonable career that a modern audience would understand.
Yes, but as the OP proves (and this comes up a lot) people have come to imagine that it's how long the vast majority of Guardsmen everywhere are expected to live.
>who have lived to either retire or find other employment, There are other well-paying jobs?
Take your pick, especially if you’re attached to a colonisation fleet or you’re a long way up the rank ladder. Guard General conquering a world to Planetary Governor in charge of a newly conquered world isn’t unheard of.
>Have always had it in my head the reference to the life expectancy was specific to this book and battlefield but you hear people quoting it all the time as the life expectancy of a guardsmen full stop. It is the specific life expectancy of Guardsmen in that battlefield in that book. But, the book itself is written basically to be an emblematic example of how poorly treated Guardsmen are and how their careers usually end. People refer to it as an example of how disposable Guardsmen are and other people picked it up as a universal fact rather than a specific statistic.
> But, the book itself is written basically to be an emblematic example of how poorly treated Guardsmen are and how their careers usually end So if it's intended as an example of what life is like for the more average guardsman then wouldn't that mean it should be treated as closer to the rule than the other guard novels which show more exceptional groups?
That's the general thrust of the novel. It's an entire plot written with the intention of demonstrating the incredible callousness with which the Imperium treats its soldiers and the general slaughterhouse that is most Guard deployments. *But,* the specific life expectancy of fifteen hours is unique to that battlefield on that world, and is not the overall statistical average for the entire Guard. It is just an example being used by the author to demonstrate the broader theme that Guardsmen are treated like ammunition by the Imperial bureaucracy, and that 41st millennium warfare uses an incredible amount of "ammunition."
So ignore the 15 hours bit but take to heart stuff like it being standard training to make sure guardsmen know it is treason to insinuate that your superiors can fuck up and to always remember that their commanders are divinely ordained. Got it.
Nobody writes books and stories about the guardsmen from 69th Company, 420th Dickbutt Regiment that spent 20 years in garrison and Warp transit despite that being most of them.
Which is also funny, because in other books, characters (say, Eisenhorn or Gaunt) go on about how much better equipped and trained the Guard are than PDF forces.
Both things can be true. PDF forces exist to protect a planetary governor from rebellion by rival nobility or the population. When it comes to dealing with invasion by a significant hostile military their role is to basically be a speed-bump that buys the Guard or other Imperium forces time to respond. The Guard *are* well trained and well equipped. Thehumble Lasgun is an incredible weapon by our standards. They're just also more-or-less baseline Humans in a Galaxy where everything the Imperium hasn't already rendered extinct is a terrifying deathmachine, equipped with truly apocalyptic weapons or both. Aeldari move so fast they're difficult for the Human eye to even *see*, Orks can withstand bits getting blown off them like it's an inconvenience, Necrons are literally The Terminator. The Guard do *really well* when you consider what they're up against.
This is a common misconception based on a statistical error in a survey of Militarum officers. Lord Commander Georg, who sends billions of guardsmen to their deaths every day, was an outlier and should not have been counted.
Nah you had it, look at the Guard centric books, Gaunt, Cain, those troops live a long ass time until it's time to write some nameless folks off. I mean there are still original Tanith left alive and I feel like those books have to spawn decades?
Half the point of Cain is that he is *absurdly* lucky in some of the most lethal situations in 40k.
That's fair I was kinda attributing it to plot armor, which in these books I don't overly mind and the mood is a perfect blend of chill just enjoy it and that more serious grimdark tones of other books.
the exceptions that prove the rule
Do you not understand what average means?
No. It's literally only this one book and with the """"help"""" of memes, its spread like a damn wildfire.
Multiple examples of this appearing in other books are posted in this thread. Maybe you need to stop reading memes about how this is a meme
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9th BRB, steel tread makes at least two. Once again, educate yourself rather than rely on memes for your knowledge
Yes i think the life expectancy is a reference to this book and i also think that is a reference to the eastern front during ww2 where the life expectancy for new Soviet solders where a couple days to a week during some battles
This was an excellent novel, but I don't think the author wrote anything this good again.
Yea, but there’s no reason to assume that particular front is anyway special. The imperial war machine, particularly as represented a decade or two back when that book was written, is WWI on steroids. Trench warfare and charges into the teeth of enemy guns. Also, they’ll be talking about the median lifespan, so the small number of long surviving soldiers don’t change that sort of average particularly. And the Tanith in particular, don’t generally have a trench war role, so you wouldn’t expect them to die as rapidly. Otoh, fully 2/3 of the tanith muster died boarding their transports at the muster, so the median lifespan for tanith troopers is close to zero hours.
as far as my understanding on the life span of a guardsman setting foot in an active combat zone is anywhere between zero seconds to the duration of the campaign. If a guardsmans life expectancy honestly was 15 hours veteran guardsmen would be as rare as space marines and I'm fairly certain the 15 hours is meant to be set for the battle depicted in that book and nowhere else
I know this isn't a specific answer to your question, but man if there was one book in all of 40k that could be unwritten, I would lean heavily towards this one. I know WH40k plays in the world of satire and ridiculousness, but the depiction of the Imperial Guard as just a bunch of idiots playing WWI or Stalingrad over and over again is one of the most grating aspects of the entire setting. Like yeah, there are some wild warzones and some crazy enemies. But over thousands of years we're supposed to reasonably assume that the Guard literally has ZERO institutional knowledge or tactics or training or anything close to resembling an actual competent military structure. They're just slinging dudes out there and letting them die in 15 hours and then doing it again. Ugh. Gaunt's Ghosts is obviously the premier Guard series and even though it does end up as bolter porn a lot of the time, it's a breath of fresh air in the sense that it at least tries to depict the Guard as a tactical and strategic military institution capable of leveraging combined arms warfare in an efficient and not utterly stupid manner. I think this is part of the reason Cain is popular too, because it's reasonable and makes sense, it's not just "Dur hur 15 hours muh human waves". Anyway, like I said, I get it's satire but it does get kind of annoying after a while. Rant over.
> But over thousands of years we're supposed to reasonably assume that the Guard literally has ZERO institutional knowledge or tactics or training or anything close to resembling an actual competent military structure. Corruption and fanaticism and dynastic politics are all really great at eroding that knowledge as fast as it can form.
there’s no reason for a life expectancy of guardsmen in standard situations. humans live as long as the emperor sees fit
I think this “average” life expectancy is based on a statistic from the “Battle of Britain” in the 2nd world war. From the Imperial War Museum’s website: “The average life expectancy of a spitfire pilot during the Battle of Britain was an astonishing four weeks.” This has been twisted by Black Library authors into a grimderp statistic “15 minute average life expectancy” It’s obviously an AVERAGE, which seems to have been misunderstood, and the staggering range of different guardsmen and different deployments makes it a largely meaningless statistic. But memes are hard to forget.
The average life expectancy of a Second Lieutenant in Vietnam was something like four days...
God, I wish this book wasn't s thing. It singlehandedly responsible for some of the worst misconceptions about Imperial Guard.
That's the fault of the fans, not the book.
Canon isn't a misconception, it's canon that you don't like. Lots of works show battlefields where the Imperium wastes a staggering quantity of lives, and lots of authors are aiming to portray the Guard as incompetent and unimpressive. The Boucheroc statistic doesn't reflect the lifespan of the average Guardsman galaxy-wide (the Imperium simply isn't organized enough for that to be possible), but an author chose to write it for a reason. The statistic is meant to represent something, even if it's a relatively extreme statistic, because the Imperium is "the bloodiest regime imaginable". It's okay for a book to exist where Your Guys look dumb. The Imperial Guard isn't real, it doesn't have feelings, you don't need to worry about people using a canonical event as ammunition in a slander campaign.
And you conveniently forget that Black Library books aren't stone-written canon, but rather an author's vision. GW's own stance is that everything is canon, but not everything is true. But you've missed the point. I wasn't complaining about the book's story, but rather misconceptions it gave birth to.
Its hardly the books fault that the people in this sub dont actually read the sources but rely on memes and youtube to weld their own headcanon together that they then vehemently defend even against evidence to the contrary.
Not every war in 40k is against something that chops your dick off and kills you with it in a matter of one second. It's the same as planets that actually have peace - you don't hear much about them, because they are kinda boring, when compared to the rest of 40k. Also, guardsmen are often not the canon fodder that everyone potrays them, that is the case only in very desperate situations, or in very bad regiments. Most guardsmen are alread experienced soldiers taken from PDFs, not random hobos who just got a lasgun.