The Old Guard
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| The Old Guard | |
| Disbanded | 3151 |
| Affiliation | Mercenary |
| Parent Command | Hansen's Roughriders |
Contents
Operational History[edit]
Origins[edit]
The Old Guard history, which lasted about 200 years, began as an unofficial comittee of retired MechWarriors, tankers and infantry soldiers, which volunteered to uphold some semblance of standards into the rough-and-tumble world of Hansen's Roughriders, acting as liaisons between the Roughriders's command and their dependents, mainly in discipliary issues, but also assisting the families of the Roughriders which had fell in combat. During the Bromhead Massacre, the Old Guard fough and died to protect the unit's dependants when the Second Taurian Lancers attacked the settlement, managing to save some and evacuate them, but at the cost of losing their own families.[1]
Jihad[edit]
Then, bent on revenge, they became an active combat unit: cobbled together a company of tanks salvaged and participated in the Pleiades campaign against the Taurian Concordat. The retired tankers trained former infantry to be proficient gunners, and they reached a surprising number of enemy kills, surpassing the other Roughriders' regular tank units performance. Upon ending the campaign, Colonel Wolfgang Hansen incorporated the Old Guard into the Roughriders as an all-volunteer armor company, heavily upgrading their tanks. Since then, they became the anvil on which break enemy forces. The Old Guard played a pivotal role several times into the Roughriders assault on Terra to root the Word of Blake, but the unit was nearly obliterated there.[2]
Dark Age Era[edit]
Th quiet years after the Jihad saw the Old Guard playing again a more protectant role of the Roughriders' dependents, until the Battle of Galatea, where the stalled two Clan Jade Falcon Trinaries in Gilroy Crossing, downing nine of their 'Mechs, allowing the rest of the Roughriders to reach the city and push the Falcon's out.[3]
Battle of Terra and Destruction[edit]
The Old Guard again accompanied the Roughriders into their contract for the Republic of the Sphere on Terra, to train the RAF forces, but the contract found them on Australia when Clan Wolf landed there. The Battle of Terra proved to be the last one for the old Guard. They fought a delaying action against the forces led by Wolf SaKhan Garner Kerensky. This allowed the Roughriders' battalion to break contact and escape, but the Guard had to sacrifice themselves to do that. They were overrun, with any survivor taking prisoner. Their fate is unknown, but their sacrifice was honored by all Roughriders surviving the battle of Terra.[4]
Officers[edit]
| Rank | Name | Command | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commanding Officers of The Old Guard | |||
| Major | Erik Reinhardt | 3151 | |
Tactics[edit]
Unknown.
Composition History[edit]
At the time of the Battle of Terra, the Old Guard fielded a Heavy Armor Company reinforced, with three platoons of six tanks and a fourth platoon of J-27 Ordnance Transport to resupply the unit in combat. They fielded Challenger XMBTs, Bulwark and DI Morgan assault tanks and DI Schmitt's tanks.[5]