Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

It seems like since the Imperial guard takes staggering losses, there should be a staggering number of bodies to dispose of.

Are the buried in mass graves? Stripped of gear and burned? Bodies returned to their homes to be mourned by their loved ones?

Depends on the regiment...
I suppose it varies from regiment to regiment depending on the world.

I'm going to go with mass graves in most warzones, and cremation on Hives World or worlds under attack from Chaos/Nurgle, the last thing you need are zombie guardsmen.

depends depends ...........

Some regiments will likely use them for protein etc resyk
Others arrange for the honoured dead to be shipped to special worlds that house the Dead (recent Gaunts Ghosts novel)
Some will bury/burn/ etc them where they died, believing that there spirits will continue to watch over the world they fought and died for.
Some will carry out conventional arrangements

its 40K most options will be covered

In Fear the Alien, there's a reference to guardsmen being cremated with a flamer in a trench after a Tyranid attack. It just made me wonder if that was standard procedure.

Lonecoon wrote:In Fear the Alien, there's a reference to guardsmen being cremated with a flamer in a trench after a Tyranid attack. It just made me wonder if that was standard procedure.

Sounds sensible, not exactly humane. Less biomass for the Nids I suppose.

I don't see how it isn't humane...
They're already dead and burning the bodies will only serve to save more lives.

most of the time, it's probably mass graves. Officers probably get a plot of their own.


On Cadia, all IG are given their own little grave. once the headstone becomes impossable to read, the body is exhumed and transferred to a mass grave so a new body can be put there.

This kind of makes me want to make some graveyard terrain:

Rolling hills with hundreds of slab style headstones and a few large IG monuments.

A noted hero is obviously gonna get an honorable burial if possible...


... but a conscript or standard guardsman is probably jsut gonna get a mass burial or cremation jof some sort, if he doesn't just lie there rotting where he died or get eaten by some creature or other.

It depends on the warzone and the regiment.

Cadians are interred in graves and allowed to remain until the writing on the stone has worn away. If it is no longer readable, the bones are taken to one of the great ossuaries and interred with the other honoured dead.

I don't get where people have this blanket assumption that Guardsmen are pointless, detested cannon fodder for the Imperium. The Guard are the best and brightest fighters, picked from the cream of the PDF and given the chance to test out for the honour of joining the God-Emperor's forces and striking out across the galaxy. They have the best equipment that can reasonably be given, trained beyond the level of most humans and entrusted with the very security of the Imperium.

Where possible, they are treated with honour and decorum. The dead are regarded as having given the ultimate sacrifice and have gone on to sit at the God-Emperor's right hand.

Of course, there are exceptions, like the men of Krieg, for whom death is only the beginning of their obligation, and others like the Volpone Bluebloods who are the rich sons of noble families, whose death is a tragedy and whose weapons are often priceless heirlooms.

I would not imagine that the noble Vostroyan guardsmen and burried in mass graves. On the other hand I do not think that penal legionares are burried at all.

When elysians are killed in action, they are sometimes put in those big metal boxes used to drop heavy weapons and equipment and then buried..

Hence the nickname of these drop canister: steel coffins.

In battles of the scale in 40k, they probably just firebomb the fields of the dead. It would take years to strip the gear off the bodies and you'd need a hole the size of the grand canyon for some messes.

Miraclefish wrote:It depends on the warzone and the regiment.

Cadians are interred in graves and allowed to remain until the writing on the stone has worn away. If it is no longer readable, the bones are taken to one of the great ossuaries and interred with the other honoured dead.

I don't get where people have this blanket assumption that Guardsmen are pointless, detested cannon fodder for the Imperium. The Guard are the best and brightest fighters, picked from the cream of the PDF and given the chance to test out for the honour of joining the God-Emperor's forces and striking out across the galaxy. They have the best equipment that can reasonably be given, trained beyond the level of most humans and entrusted with the very security of the Imperium.

Where possible, they are treated with honour and decorum. The dead are regarded as having given the ultimate sacrifice and have gone on to sit at the God-Emperor's right hand.

Of course, there are exceptions, like the men of Krieg, for whom death is only the beginning of their obligation, and others like the Volpone Bluebloods who are the rich sons of noble families, whose death is a tragedy and whose weapons are often priceless heirlooms.

Mostly because they all get lumped together.

The good with the bad, thing about the good is they are few, while the bad are massive.

If the entire Guard was the caliber of some of their finer units the Imperium would be far stronger.

I imagine the more grim regiments leave them where they lie.

I believe that in the Imperial Guard Uplifting Primer, there is a bit about this.
Burning the bodies isn't adviced nor not burying the bodies at all. Both are bad for morale.
The IG carry body bags around with them when they go to war. (I believe every IG carries his own bag?)
Assuming you put bodies in bodybags, you probably bury them, but it's not necessary.

When trench warfare occurs, it's not always possible to retrive the bodies, so a lot will be eaten or left behind.

However there are billions of worlds in 40k, with a billion traditions/ cultures, so you can do pretty much everything you want. From burning, to burying, to collecting, to burning on the homeplanet. It's a game so feel free as you like.

Out of mild curiosity, how would DKoK bury their dead? Leave them where they lay for not carrying for repenting for their former heresy, or consercrated for their contribution to the path of redemption?

Or maybe clones just arn't worth noting if they're not breathing.

Chaos Lord Gir wrote:Out of mild curiosity, how would DKoK bury their dead? Leave them where they lay for not carrying for repenting for their former heresy, or consercrated for their contribution to the path of redemption?

Or maybe clones just arn't worth noting if they're not breathing.

The Quartermaster strips them of their boots and ammo and moves on to the next one. Not joking.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Chaos Lord Gir wrote:Out of mild curiosity, how would DKoK bury their dead? Leave them where they lay for not carrying for repenting for their former heresy, or consercrated for their contribution to the path of redemption?

Or maybe clones just arn't worth noting if they're not breathing.

The Quartermaster strips them of their boots and ammo and moves on to the next one. Not joking.

You know what, they suits them perfectly. Ty Kamikaze

yeah, read DEad man walking - great book, lot of info on the DKOK
like what their commisars REALLY do!

I don't think there is enough spot on EVERY planet in the Imperium to bury all the Guardsman.

On the serious side.... mass graves, since Regiments never go home - they fight until destroyed. Or other methods: space disposal, burning the body, drooping it into the sea...

Fallen weapons, ammo and kit are taken back and reissued.

Guardsmen are given whatever burial honours can be given. None wants to be the man who ignores the dead, lest the Bell Of Lost Souls toll for them next.

Depends on the dead guy, depends on the regiment, depends on the warzone.

Vs nids that would harvest biomass, or nurgle, most likely cremation.

For huge scale war, likely mass graves.

For hive, or forgeworld, likely cremation.

Some regiments might do normal burial. On cadia they bury the dead with tombstones, and there is a "Rule of legibility" where once the inscription on the tombstone becomes illegible, most likely nobody is left to care about whose grave it is, so the dead guardsman is removed from his grave and put in a mass grave, with the old grave being given to a newly dead guardsman.

I think most guardsmen should be buried in a way that ensures their skulls and body parts are destroyed so they can't be mounted on anything as a trophy

unforunately that isn't the case seeing those skulls on the chaos vehicles

I would imagine that it would depend more on the warzone. If the Vostroyan Firstborn were taking part in a gruelling campaign where the deaths numbered in the thousands every other day, you're going to get mass graves. Perhaps the equipment (as valuable as it is to the Vostroyans) will be recovered but the bodies would be disposed of as efficiently and quickly as possible.
On the other hand if said regiment is stationed on a backwater post and sees little to no action, which would likely make them a policing force, then even the lowest regiment of hive-scum birthers are going to be burying there men in single plots of land (and might even mark them in some way).

In the fluff of my Necron Hunting regiment, they often don't get a body to hold a funeral for, and the few that they can recover are packed into a coffin and given to the void. Instead they have their name carved on the Wall of Remembrance on the Inquisitors flagship.