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Hi, all.

Strange question I realise, but one that I do think about, for some reason.

I know that the Departmento Munitorum handle all of the administration for the Imperial Guard, but is this the case for when a Guard regiment is on campaign?

For example, just take a standard Guard Company. The Company would have a Company HQ containing the “staff” officers and administrators – the desk sitters and paper pushers. Each platoon, given the size of Guard platoons, would have to have a HQ with saff officers and administration too.

I know it’s 40,000 years in the future, and there is only war, however, nothing is going to happen if there isn’t a decent administration basis.

So, are all the HQ staff officers and administrators in the Guard Munitorum clerks, or members of the regiment?

I just cannot imagine a corporal from the Death Korp sitting at a desk with a cogitator, and typing out a personnel-transfer report. “With this Ctrl-key I smite the foes of the Emperor and all those who stand against Him!” [clack, clack, clack (finger pecking-typing.)]

I gotta ask:

Tower75 wrote:For example, just take a standard Guard Company. The Company would have a Company HQ containing the “staff” officers and administrators – the desk sitters and paper pushers. Each platoon, given the size of Guard platoons, would have to have a HQ with saff officers and administration too.

Why? Just because this is the way things are run today?

For all we know, logistics could happen entirely outside the regiment's tasks and abilities, with a Navy lander coming by every week to drop off a crate of food and spare parts.

In fact, given that a large portion of the Imperial Guard comes from worlds where people cannot even read or write ... what do you imagine an Attilan "paper pusher" looks like? In my own opinion, it makes sense for the Munitorum to treat each regiment as per the lowest common denominator for easier handling on a campaign, and this means taking into account that the Guard recruits fur-wearing barbarians. If the regiment had a dedicated logistics staff whilst it was still part of its own homeworld's PDF, I'd say it just stays home and gets reassigned.

The IG don't handle their own logistics for the same reason that they're not allowed to handle their own strategic lift. The Munitorium handle it so that if a Guard commander goes rogue, his men, in addition to being stranded on their current planet, can't get any more supplies.

Yup, pretty much the D.M. handles every tiny bit of logistical support campaign or not.

 Lynata wrote:
I gotta ask:

Tower75 wrote:For example, just take a standard Guard Company. The Company would have a Company HQ containing the “staff” officers and administrators – the desk sitters and paper pushers. Each platoon, given the size of Guard platoons, would have to have a HQ with saff officers and administration too.

Why? Just because this is the way things are run today?

For all we know, logistics could happen entirely outside the regiment's tasks and abilities, with a Navy lander coming by every week to drop off a crate of food and spare parts.

In fact, given that a large portion of the Imperial Guard comes from worlds where people cannot even read or write ... what do you imagine an Attilan "paper pusher" looks like? In my own opinion, it makes sense for the Munitorum to treat each regiment as per the lowest common denominator for easier handling on a campaign, and this means taking into account that the Guard recruits fur-wearing barbarians. If the regiment had a dedicated logistics staff whilst it was still part of its own homeworld's PDF, I'd say it just stays home and gets reassigned.

Why? 'Cos nothing gets done in this, or any other future world, without administration. The reason the Romans, and British Empire could KEEP a world empire is because they were administrators.

Whether you have a contempory NATO company of 120 men, or a Guard company of 600+ feral soldiers you need an administration and logistical base.

As I say, though, I know the Munitorum handle the logics and admin for the Guard, but I just wondered if that was the case for the Company, Battalion, and a Regimental HQ, while deployed, too. I assume that they do.

Pretty much. Internal officer meetings and such is handled by the unit, and keeping the minutes thereof, if this is done at all, is done internally, but anything that requires any kind of external organization (payroll, logistics, etc) is done by the DM, at every level of the IG.

On the strategic level, the DM does absolutely everything for the guard. On the regimental level the regiment handles it's own logistical affairs.

To avoid miscommunication, I think everyone agrees that some administration needs to be done - we're just discussing where it happens.

I would say that there is some internal admin within the regiment, but - or so I theorise - it would be extremely small compared to modern day standards. If we have to look at real world examples, I'd rather suggest something like France's Grande Armée of the Napoleonic Wars era, which relied heavily on looting and foraging as well as the requisitioning of local supplies, which seems fitting for the grimdark universe of 40k, as well as for the lifestyles of many regiments hailing from feral or feudal worlds.

However, Napoleon also invented the concept of attached logistics services, and decreed that each battalion and each cavalry regiment should be accompanied by two heavy wagons with sufficient provisions to keep their unit fed for ten days. These wagon trains were not run by the troops themselves, however, but civilians accompanying the regiment.
That a civilian wagon train for Guard regiments is a thing in 40k as well can be gleaned from the Whiteshield fluff, as it mentions the children borne from the regiment's soldiers are kept there.

And then the regiment may also have officers who double in functions such as the purser who administrates any pay the soldiers may receive from the Administratum. Whilst I don't think they get actual pay (which would probably change on every planet anyways), I do like novel author James Swallow's idea of the Imperium using scrip as a sort of pocket money for its inducted servants, and whilst it could also be handed out by an Administratum official I feel it makes more sense if the regiment simply nominates one of its officers to handle that. Alternatively, they could simply be counted amongst the Regimental Advisors mentioned in the 5E Codex ("a host of orderlies, adjutants, aides de camps and specialist advisors from outside the regiment") - some of whom you can actually field as miniatures of an IG army.

At some point, local administration and data gathering must be done by the IG itself. For example, taking inventory of munitions, reporting casualties, filing reports of enemy sightings and movement, etc.

I have always presumed that there were a number of servitors that were listening on vox channels and compiling these reports from verbal commands by IG officers.

After all, the Departmentum Munitorium would have loads of arcane policies and procedures that would take years to get used to and most guardsmen come from very poor educational backgrounds. It seems like servitors would be the natural fit for this mundane yet intricate work.

 Lynata wrote:
However, Napoleon also invented the concept of attached logistics services.

And as I recall his chief surgeon Dominique Larrey just about invented modern army medicine - organized mobile field hospitals, ambulance carriages and a triage system. Funny that, war giving people ideas that advance society in some way.

The IoM on the other hand seems to be so stuck in doing everything by the manual that only some very special individuals dare introduce a new method for anything. If the Munitorium handbook says where administration is handled then that's it. And I can see a reason for doing it that way, namely the issue with integrating different forces in a larger army. The regiments must by force be similar once you reach the Colonel so it's as easy as possible to handle them all without needing specialists that decipher this-and-that world's cryptic organisation. It's one of the reasons NATO countries have standards after all.

The Imperium also has a long history of sending people what they think they need, rather then what is requested.

"This is a scale 7 battle on a class G world, deliver supply package beta-5"
"But the local commander is facing Night Lord saboteurs and the planet is in the middle of an ice age!"
"Package beta-5, and I'll forward a request for a survey team to re-evaluate the system"

 Tower75 wrote:
For example, just take a standard Guard Company. The Company would have a Company HQ containing the “staff” officers and administrators – the desk sitters and paper pushers. Each platoon, given the size of Guard platoons, would have to have a HQ with saff officers and administration too.

And most people in today's military would tell you we have too many of those. Perhaps in the far future the Imperial Guard has actually become more, dare I say, efficient? Because you don't need scheduling officers when you're shipped en masse to a strange world, you don't need a facilities officer when you spend most of your time in a space craft or tent, and you don't need a safety officer when you routinely lose 50% of your troops to giant lizard-bugs. Admin in today's military cares about who you are (home of record, next of kin, religious preferences), the Imperium doesn't. There's no IGKO or GOL. There's no leave. No financial briefs to give. Furthermore, in a platoon sized unit those jobs are all going to be collateral duties anyway. At the company level, yes there may be dedicated officers for those tasks but looking at some of the options the IG have for a CCS they have the major bases covered.

"There is no ORM. No TRICARE. There is only War!"

I just cannot imagine a corporal from the Death Korp sitting at a desk with a cogitator, and typing out a personnel-transfer report. “With this Ctrl-key I smite the foes of the Emperor and all those who stand against Him!” [clack, clack, clack (finger pecking-typing.)]

Go watch Black Hawk Down, the scene where Orlando Bloom's character checks in.

You also don't transfer units as individuals in the IG. Once you're assigned to your regiment on your homeworld... that's it. That's your permanent unit assignation, unless and until you suffer such casualties that you'll be rolled into another unit, but that will be done unit by unit, rather than as individual soldiers, and so will be handled by the DM.

Medical care is handled by either your unit medics or a field hospital. If you're very fortunate, you'll fall under the care of a Sister Hospitaller, though you are more likely to meet a unicorn. There's no insurance or other paperwork to deal with, really.

Thsi thread reminded me, we need to add DM = Departmento Munitorum to Dakka's acronyms system.