Common Military Units: Difference between revisions

Made obsolete in many ways by changing security techniques, Guards troops are the ones that [[Exactly What it Says on the Tin|guard the person]] of a monarch. They were also his personal strike team in the past when monarchs commanded in the field. In modern times, bodyguarding has become more sophisticated than just putting walking sacks of meat between an assassin and the target; thus, Guards units are often parade units or honor designations.<ref>In the Red Army, weirdly, distinguished units were called guards even though they did no guarding except of their own billet. The name was equivalent to a Presidential Unit Citation in America.</ref>

The US has no units designated "guards". Security for dignitaries is provided by the Secret Service. Britain, and the Vatican and a few other states with a taste for aesthetic anachronism retain them. In the case of British Guards they are soldiers like others and while they might spend part of their time attending the Sovereign have many times in history been put in the line far away quite often with distinction. In a more modernized version, it is common for dictators to maintain comparable units as a "second army" in case of mutiny or rebellion. The notorious SS which, [[You Shouldn't Know This Already|was not as benign]] as redcoated Coldstreamers parading around Buckingham Palace, was an example of this. This type of thing will often not be just a regiment or two but [[State Sec|a whole army]] and will have far greater goals then guarding a few persons(though they often do that as dictators trust no one else), sometimes basically enforcing a [[Police State]].

This is a generic for guerillas or [[Wacky Wayside Tribe|local auxiliaries]]. Many nations have found a way to officialize them, sometimes by finding [[Lawrence of Arabia|a specialized officer who can make use of them.]] While requiring painstaking diplomacy they possess local knowledge and in some cases are easier to downsize in peacetime. Sometimes irregulars associated with a given army for to long will tempt overtidy bureaucrats into making it something indistinguishable from the rest of the service except for having a cool designation. This is a wasteful practice, because the whole point of them is often that their ancestors had lived a [[HAD to Be Sharp|civilian life]] that gave them qualities hard to copy in just any soldier, however frustrating irregulars can be. Special forces are in many ways the modern incarnation though if there was a general war, again the practice of recruiting local will arise again(indeed it seems to have in many places where the US is committed). The difference is that Special forces are from the same manpower pool as regulars, while irregulars tend to be from client polities, local folk with their [[Enemy Mine|their own reason for fighting]] or even straight out mercenaries. In the [[Napoleonic Wars]] Austrian Croats or Russian Cossacks which were contributed by backcountry clans would be irregulars, whereas French Chaussers or British Light Infantry which did some of the same work as Croats but were recruited by the normal army would be something like special forces.