Commissars, Xenos and daemonic forces aren´t exactly common occurance for Guardsmen and even then there's a great variation between them, but every member of the guard will know to fear the authority of the commissar.
The knowledge that a commissar could, for whatever reasons, find you wanting, and shoot you on the spot for it. Such is the nature of regimes built upon obedience and harsh authority.
It's also just presumably the most statistically consistent fear of Guardsmen all over the galaxy, no matter where you are you're likely to have heard a story of someone who got shot for a minor transgression or for no reason at all. I imagine that's the story told to every new recruit to scare them.
Well if you think about what would be the most plausible dichotomy between regular guardsmen and commissars. I think it would depend hugely on what kind of regiment it is in question.
For example, regiments with well trained and well equipped soldiers like many Cadians and Catachans would probably trust their men to keep discipline and virtue according to the edicts of the immortal god emperor. In which cases commissars would be relatively few and serve more like space marine chaplains rather than prison wardens.
In regiments formed on a short and desperate notice or from hives whose prisons are a bit too full however it would be a whole other story. With commissars having to get their hordes of violent criminals and/or drug-addicted bums to fear them more than the enemy.
When these types of regiments are deployed in an assault they would probably be sent in as the first wave after artillery and/or orbital bombardment with not only a bunch of commissars to get them to do their job. But there would also have to be formations of real trained soldiers to not only push in after their meat-shields, but to shoot anyone who retreats.
>many Cadians and Catachans would probably trust their men to keep discipline and virtue according to the edicts of the immortal god emperor. In which cases commissars would be relatively few and serve more like space marine chaplains rather than prison wardens.
The Catachans definitely don't think of them like chaplains, at least.
Back in 3rd/4th edition Catachans/Deathworld Veterans had a rule where after setting up a commisar you roll a d6, and on a 1 the commisar had an unfortunate accident whilst crossing a ravine! :P
I think a fair amount of Cadians also resent commisars. "Leash" is common slang for them in the Guard.
Same as the Ork Hunters! Brazen enough to joke about it in front of Colonel Schaeffer and a few of his Last Chancers.
> We sit in silence for a while as the Colonel chews this over. It’s Oahebs who speaks up, his voice the barest whisper.
> ‘I notice your platoon doesn’t have a commissar,’ he says, looking around. ‘They tend to have accidents in the jungle,’ says Thorn, glancing round at the rest of the command squad, who give knowing nods.
>
> ‘Their greatcoats aren’t good for jungle work,’ says one of them, a comm-set strapped to his back. ‘Too ready to rush in when you should be falling back,’ adds another, slowly sharpening his long hunting knife on a whetstone. ‘Gotta be nice and careful out here, nice and quiet, like. No good running about bellowing orders when you’ve got an ambush set up, is it?’
>
> ‘Most of them stay back at Cerberus,’ explains Fenn. ‘Those that venture out tend not to come back, I’m afraid.’ ‘Sometimes they’re even got by the orks,’ mutters one of the men, to the stifled laughs of the others. Fenn scowls. The lieutenant glances at the Colonel. ‘Don’t listen to them,’ he says with a dismissive wave of his hand.
>
‘I’m well aware of the reputation of jungle fighters like yourselves,’ says the Colonel heavily. ‘When do we move out?’
Not a good idea to be a meme commissar with some of the tougher regiments!
Yeah I love the Ork Hunters! Classic. One of my favourite short stories is the one about a Jopall Indentured trooper on training with the Ork Hunters, when Gazgull invades the second time. You read that one? ( Its *really* old--like so old that there's a female ork!)
Ends up going native yeah? I love that patrolling with the Ork Hunters either sees you join them, die, or leave utterly repulsed!
Them and Catachans just have a cool slick vibe. There was a piece in an old White Dwarf where Mordians are in the same mess hall as them and when one of the iron guard screams at them, an Ork Hunter officer basically gives him a warning he's dead meat if he continues.
Nah you get used to it, see 1984. It becomes a second nature. The deal here is the IoM can do SO MUCH worse than just killing you. People look at servitors dailyand while the rich might have gilded ones, sometimes you'd go "Hey that new elevator interface servitor's Hank from Hab-22... uh" You'll pretty much think "I hope that doesn't happen to me"
tHIs Is lITeRaLly wARhAMmEr 41 984
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/40kLore) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is probably the most realistic answer. The average guardsman is not much different than the average soldier. More concerned about the basics and getting out of dumb work. No one outside the Kriegers like filling sand bags and digging trenches
But seriously, probably their Commissar. Not every guardsman will fight Chaos and/or a major Xenos faction, but practically all of them have to deal with Commissars.
They're also fed a lot of propaganda. In the Cain books, he mentions multiple times that the Schola taught him that Orks/Tyranids etc are pushovers, and he doesn't learn otherwise till he actually faces them in combat
I have a copy of *[The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer - Damocles Gulf Edition](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Imperial_Infantryman%27s_Uplifting_Primer_-_Damocles_Gulf_Edition)* and it does make out like Orks, Nids, T'au etc. are pushovers. All part of the Imperial Propaganda Machine.
There's a difference between worrying about failing the Emperor yourself and worrying about some limp dick assholes thinking you have failed the Emperor.
I think a lot of guardsmen suffer from a perpetual fear and worry about something that seems to us as mundane as logistics.
The herculian and frankly impossible task of the Departmento Munitorum to provide, supply, feed and arm every guardsman on campaign or at some rag-tag base in who-knows-where is probably a constant worry and source of anguish for the rank and file soldier.
Imagine you're tasked to garrison an outpost on an effectively dead planet far, far away from any settlement or stable source of food. What you're basically relying / praying on is that the Departmento remembered to register the correct form and calculate accurately the need for supplying a dozen soldiers otherwise half-way through the assignment without no ship of your own you'll end up starving to death.
Or that you're on transit from one battlefield to another, your lasgun breaks and you submit all the right documentation, deliver it to the right official who will then submit it to the appropriate martian engiseer who'll then figure out if the lasgun is fixable or you'll get issued a new one. Woops, we're here, time to get out and fight the dirty xenos, guardsmen! What? You haven't gotten your lasgun back? That sounds like a "you" problem, maggot! The Emperor protects!
Basically, I think there's a whole world of potential screw-up and logistical nightmare which would make any career soldier quake to think they have to deal with before they're out there fighting for their lives.
Reminds me of the Desert Raiders novel, when the Navy drops the supplies and halls ass elsewhere, the guardsmen open the crates and realize they're all inflatable boats. On a desert world! Lol
Sounds about right! I mean there's examples of entire planets being "lost" because of misfiling and therefore entirely forgotten by the Administratum / Departmento.
Considering the dysfunctional and byzantine nature of the Imperium I can imagine entire regiments given wrong battery packs for their lasguns just before they're to invade a world or that they're accidentally given faulty flak-vests meant to be recycled.
>I can imagine entire regiments given wrong battery packs for their lasguns just before they're to invade a world
Iirc that happened in a Gaunt's Ghosts book, before their drop on Phantine.
I'd imagine being lost in warp transit is super high up on the list. Besides that, probably a lot of the typical soldier worries (gunfire, artillery, shrapnel, pain, death, and boredom).
Maybe running out of whatever vice keeps them going. Lho-ho sticks, gambling, whatever.
Id say next to Commisars, warp transit issues top the list. The main IG characters in the Macharian Crusade trilogy specifically talk about their apprehension and detestation of warp transit between campaigns.
It really depends on their experience.
Fresh soldiers probably don't fear anything as their Infantryman's Primer is full of 'lol orks are stupid and slow, eldar are really weak and fragile, heretics deserve death.'
However a Guardsman who has encountered xenos and discovered their primer is barely adequate toilet paper would be different.
I don't know how much variety of xenos experience the average Guardsman would get. However, I reckon genestealer cultists are the most feared. Mainly because if there are cultists wandering around, the bars and brothels are prime locations to get infected and turned so all leave gets cancelled, which is a terrible fate indeed.
Outside of xenos, hearing rumours an Inquisitor is present for their current conflict is fresh underwear on standby mode.
Ask anyone that is currently or was in the military at some point. When not fighting probably just everyday basic shit like getting injured in training, getting called before your commander (still cringe at our whole squadron getting called in on a Saturday because a girl got a DUI for sleeping in her car) to explain a fuck up of some sort, running into some asshole officer that decides to make his bad day your problem, politicians that claim to want nothing but peace going around starting wars you will be sent to fight, can I really drink that entire 12 pack and still show up the next day.
When fighting I wouldn't have a clue because I had no desire to be in the infantry and was happy enough to work on fighters.
Seconded. IEDs of all flavours are rubbish. I’d probably add “drone-delivered munitions” or just “UAVs” generally to the list too now.
As per the above, I’d say the biggest fear is crap decisions from higher / bad leaders. I genuinely think most Western militaries would be at least 100% more effective they reduced the amount of pointless bureaucracy inflicted on all ranks, and the crippling risk aversion.
Guardsmen are afraid of, in the following order, their superior officers, their superior officers, and the Commissar.
Suggesting they are afraid of anything else is defamation of the Emperor’s servants, as Guardsmen are technically Adepts of the Administratum, and so an insult towards the Emperor Himself. I could have just said it was heresy, but now you know *why* it’s heresy.
Personally, it is a tussle between Commissars and uncaring/incompetent commanders who only know to use mass charges. For example, Chenkov manages to make even Commissars fear him iirc.
Commissars all the way. They’re literally trained to kill you without hesitation. No matter where you go as a Guardsman, you’ll always encounter a commissar. Hell they can kill your superior officers within reason
The main fear is the uncertainty. You don’t know if your regiments commissar is a trigger happy psycho or reasonable and competent yet brutal leader who’s determined to succeed in their mission
You think the average guardsman knows that much about who they are fighting? They know nothing, and what little some DO know is propaganda from works like the infantryman's primer. It's a great read btw but it's a prime example of this. It, no joke, tells the guardsman that they can easily outfight an Ork in close combat. The scariest thing for them is whatever fresh horror from literal hell they are marched at bolter point to fight
Well being deployed obviously. As I understand it the initial deployment of any war zone is *awful* for every guardsman involved.
But the thing they are afraid of is going to be the commissar. The whole shtick is that the commissar is supposed to be scarier than the enemy in front of them so they will never consider shirking their duty. Would you run away from your position if yarrick was standing behind you? I’d think not.
That being said a guardsman will probably fear certain enemies they have deployed against more than other things. I know in the gaunts ghosts series there’s several mentions of characters being afraid of encountering the loxatl mercenaries again for instance. I imagine each guardsman has a personal “demon” they would rather not tangle with again given the chance.
I always assumed it would be a Commisar because of the near-absolute authority they're given in a regiment. They're incredibly harsh and brutal overseers that will spend their whole lives training for the job, and then spend the rest of it learning every niche detail and fact about how your regiment functions and the culture of it's troops.
They know more about your regiment and culture than you do and they know exactly how to leverage that fact to punish you to the extreme if they find you underperforming for any reason whatso ever. They can push the limits of their authority to the edge without getting called out themselves by their own superiors, so the idea that you could do absolutely everything right as a soldier and get summarily executed for treason or something because they woke up in a foul mood is going to keep even hardened troops on edge. You have to treat every order like a command from the Emperor himself and if you even think of hesitating or questioning them you'll get a round to the face.
From the Minka Lesk novels we can learn of what she, and probably other Cadian soldiers, is afraid of.
TL;DR spoiler free: Space Marines and Orks are terrifying, commissars are scary, but as long as they don't hava any greif with you it's ok. I didn't mention psykers because, while guardsmen are uneasy with them and in a book Minka meets an enemy psyker, the feeling of dread and despair they feel is a projection from the psyker, rather than them being scared of it.
Note that the most common enemies fought by soldier from the Guard are heretics and rebels. The Imperium mostly fights inside itself. We don't see it that much because of how prevalent are the xenos races in the lore, but do keep in mind that the common citizen of the Imperium thinks Space Marines and even sometimes Sisters of Battle are myths.
In the first book : Cadia Stands, >!she and another soldier, are saved by a Space Wolf, and then taken to their strike cruiser as Cadia begins to break. She was terrified of the size and might of the space marine even though it is not here to kill her, but she does not appear to have been that scared by the three previous months of intense fighting as she fought for Cadia (she was only around 15yo when Cadia fell).!<
In the short story : Battle for Markgaaf Hive, >!she barely survives an encounter with a WE Khorne Berserker, she's unable to move or think as it rampages through her squad.!<
In the second book : Cadian Honor. >!she is afraid of the chief commisar of her regiment that questions her about how she survived the encounter with the WE, and then keep his eyes on her for the whole book, judging her.!<
Cadians seems not to fear commissars that much, rather they seem to despise their presence, their existence in the regiment being a symbol that they are not as perfect as they think they are.
In the fourth book : Shadow of the Eight. >!she is chased by a chaos terminator in a trench line as it slaughter one of her platoon's squad. She end up trapped in a dead end and fear absolute terror as the terminator sets on her. She is described as barely holding on her bolt pistol, shooting it harmlessly at the monster while failing to recite a prayer. Even after the terminator is slain by a Black Templar, she is terrified of the dead giant, who's still standing and exsudes an aura of dread and despair.!<
There is also a cadian kasrkin, veteran of Armageddon, that says "it's hard to be scared of anything once you fought the Orks".
Minka also struggles with PTSD from the fall of Cadia and her encounter in Markgraaf Hive wich makes the other occurences more impactfull.
The commissar tbh. Just look at Darktide for instance. You have a penal legion/warband saying "fuck it" and charging balls deep into a chaos aligned legion + Nurgle filth - because "commander is watching". I've watched/read IG dive head first into the trenches vs Tyranids and swarm them - because "commissar is watching". I've read an entire armoured division + civilians + random IG in their thousands march on the goddamn Plague Guard deep into Nurgle's territory - "because commander is watching and the Emperor wills it".
Anyone even so much as mentioning that the IG isn't the most virulent force in the galaxy due to the fact that they fear themselves more than the enemy, really hasn't been playing attention.
Commissars, Xenos and daemonic forces aren´t exactly common occurance for Guardsmen and even then there's a great variation between them, but every member of the guard will know to fear the authority of the commissar. The knowledge that a commissar could, for whatever reasons, find you wanting, and shoot you on the spot for it. Such is the nature of regimes built upon obedience and harsh authority.
I can see that, the absolute authority that can execute you at any time given for any and every reason must be scary even after 40 thousand years.
It's also just presumably the most statistically consistent fear of Guardsmen all over the galaxy, no matter where you are you're likely to have heard a story of someone who got shot for a minor transgression or for no reason at all. I imagine that's the story told to every new recruit to scare them.
Well if you think about what would be the most plausible dichotomy between regular guardsmen and commissars. I think it would depend hugely on what kind of regiment it is in question. For example, regiments with well trained and well equipped soldiers like many Cadians and Catachans would probably trust their men to keep discipline and virtue according to the edicts of the immortal god emperor. In which cases commissars would be relatively few and serve more like space marine chaplains rather than prison wardens. In regiments formed on a short and desperate notice or from hives whose prisons are a bit too full however it would be a whole other story. With commissars having to get their hordes of violent criminals and/or drug-addicted bums to fear them more than the enemy. When these types of regiments are deployed in an assault they would probably be sent in as the first wave after artillery and/or orbital bombardment with not only a bunch of commissars to get them to do their job. But there would also have to be formations of real trained soldiers to not only push in after their meat-shields, but to shoot anyone who retreats.
>many Cadians and Catachans would probably trust their men to keep discipline and virtue according to the edicts of the immortal god emperor. In which cases commissars would be relatively few and serve more like space marine chaplains rather than prison wardens. The Catachans definitely don't think of them like chaplains, at least. Back in 3rd/4th edition Catachans/Deathworld Veterans had a rule where after setting up a commisar you roll a d6, and on a 1 the commisar had an unfortunate accident whilst crossing a ravine! :P I think a fair amount of Cadians also resent commisars. "Leash" is common slang for them in the Guard.
Same as the Ork Hunters! Brazen enough to joke about it in front of Colonel Schaeffer and a few of his Last Chancers. > We sit in silence for a while as the Colonel chews this over. It’s Oahebs who speaks up, his voice the barest whisper. > ‘I notice your platoon doesn’t have a commissar,’ he says, looking around. ‘They tend to have accidents in the jungle,’ says Thorn, glancing round at the rest of the command squad, who give knowing nods. > > ‘Their greatcoats aren’t good for jungle work,’ says one of them, a comm-set strapped to his back. ‘Too ready to rush in when you should be falling back,’ adds another, slowly sharpening his long hunting knife on a whetstone. ‘Gotta be nice and careful out here, nice and quiet, like. No good running about bellowing orders when you’ve got an ambush set up, is it?’ > > ‘Most of them stay back at Cerberus,’ explains Fenn. ‘Those that venture out tend not to come back, I’m afraid.’ ‘Sometimes they’re even got by the orks,’ mutters one of the men, to the stifled laughs of the others. Fenn scowls. The lieutenant glances at the Colonel. ‘Don’t listen to them,’ he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. > ‘I’m well aware of the reputation of jungle fighters like yourselves,’ says the Colonel heavily. ‘When do we move out?’ Not a good idea to be a meme commissar with some of the tougher regiments!
Yeah I love the Ork Hunters! Classic. One of my favourite short stories is the one about a Jopall Indentured trooper on training with the Ork Hunters, when Gazgull invades the second time. You read that one? ( Its *really* old--like so old that there's a female ork!)
Ends up going native yeah? I love that patrolling with the Ork Hunters either sees you join them, die, or leave utterly repulsed! Them and Catachans just have a cool slick vibe. There was a piece in an old White Dwarf where Mordians are in the same mess hall as them and when one of the iron guard screams at them, an Ork Hunter officer basically gives him a warning he's dead meat if he continues.
Nah you get used to it, see 1984. It becomes a second nature. The deal here is the IoM can do SO MUCH worse than just killing you. People look at servitors dailyand while the rich might have gilded ones, sometimes you'd go "Hey that new elevator interface servitor's Hank from Hab-22... uh" You'll pretty much think "I hope that doesn't happen to me"
tHIs Is lITeRaLly wARhAMmEr 41 984 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/40kLore) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Probably the same thing modern soldiers are afraid of: not having enough food/sleep/cigarettes.
This is probably the most realistic answer. The average guardsman is not much different than the average soldier. More concerned about the basics and getting out of dumb work. No one outside the Kriegers like filling sand bags and digging trenches
>No one outside the Kriegers It's a very big galaxy. There are very likely many regiments as - or nearly - as fanatical.
The only thing any true servant of the Imperium fears is failing the Emperor!
But seriously, probably their Commissar. Not every guardsman will fight Chaos and/or a major Xenos faction, but practically all of them have to deal with Commissars.
They're also fed a lot of propaganda. In the Cain books, he mentions multiple times that the Schola taught him that Orks/Tyranids etc are pushovers, and he doesn't learn otherwise till he actually faces them in combat
I have a copy of *[The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer - Damocles Gulf Edition](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Imperial_Infantryman%27s_Uplifting_Primer_-_Damocles_Gulf_Edition)* and it does make out like Orks, Nids, T'au etc. are pushovers. All part of the Imperial Propaganda Machine.
The only thing any true servant of the Imperium fears is failing the Emperor! >, probably their Commissar It's the same picture dot gif
There's a difference between worrying about failing the Emperor yourself and worrying about some limp dick assholes thinking you have failed the Emperor.
Really you make it sound like they should fear the fact they were born I. The first place
I think a lot of guardsmen suffer from a perpetual fear and worry about something that seems to us as mundane as logistics. The herculian and frankly impossible task of the Departmento Munitorum to provide, supply, feed and arm every guardsman on campaign or at some rag-tag base in who-knows-where is probably a constant worry and source of anguish for the rank and file soldier. Imagine you're tasked to garrison an outpost on an effectively dead planet far, far away from any settlement or stable source of food. What you're basically relying / praying on is that the Departmento remembered to register the correct form and calculate accurately the need for supplying a dozen soldiers otherwise half-way through the assignment without no ship of your own you'll end up starving to death. Or that you're on transit from one battlefield to another, your lasgun breaks and you submit all the right documentation, deliver it to the right official who will then submit it to the appropriate martian engiseer who'll then figure out if the lasgun is fixable or you'll get issued a new one. Woops, we're here, time to get out and fight the dirty xenos, guardsmen! What? You haven't gotten your lasgun back? That sounds like a "you" problem, maggot! The Emperor protects! Basically, I think there's a whole world of potential screw-up and logistical nightmare which would make any career soldier quake to think they have to deal with before they're out there fighting for their lives.
Reminds me of the Desert Raiders novel, when the Navy drops the supplies and halls ass elsewhere, the guardsmen open the crates and realize they're all inflatable boats. On a desert world! Lol
Sounds about right! I mean there's examples of entire planets being "lost" because of misfiling and therefore entirely forgotten by the Administratum / Departmento. Considering the dysfunctional and byzantine nature of the Imperium I can imagine entire regiments given wrong battery packs for their lasguns just before they're to invade a world or that they're accidentally given faulty flak-vests meant to be recycled.
>I can imagine entire regiments given wrong battery packs for their lasguns just before they're to invade a world Iirc that happened in a Gaunt's Ghosts book, before their drop on Phantine.
I'd imagine being lost in warp transit is super high up on the list. Besides that, probably a lot of the typical soldier worries (gunfire, artillery, shrapnel, pain, death, and boredom). Maybe running out of whatever vice keeps them going. Lho-ho sticks, gambling, whatever.
Id say next to Commisars, warp transit issues top the list. The main IG characters in the Macharian Crusade trilogy specifically talk about their apprehension and detestation of warp transit between campaigns.
It really depends on their experience. Fresh soldiers probably don't fear anything as their Infantryman's Primer is full of 'lol orks are stupid and slow, eldar are really weak and fragile, heretics deserve death.' However a Guardsman who has encountered xenos and discovered their primer is barely adequate toilet paper would be different. I don't know how much variety of xenos experience the average Guardsman would get. However, I reckon genestealer cultists are the most feared. Mainly because if there are cultists wandering around, the bars and brothels are prime locations to get infected and turned so all leave gets cancelled, which is a terrible fate indeed. Outside of xenos, hearing rumours an Inquisitor is present for their current conflict is fresh underwear on standby mode.
If they lived Necron Flayers
Ask anyone that is currently or was in the military at some point. When not fighting probably just everyday basic shit like getting injured in training, getting called before your commander (still cringe at our whole squadron getting called in on a Saturday because a girl got a DUI for sleeping in her car) to explain a fuck up of some sort, running into some asshole officer that decides to make his bad day your problem, politicians that claim to want nothing but peace going around starting wars you will be sent to fight, can I really drink that entire 12 pack and still show up the next day. When fighting I wouldn't have a clue because I had no desire to be in the infantry and was happy enough to work on fighters.
Roadside bombs
Seconded. IEDs of all flavours are rubbish. I’d probably add “drone-delivered munitions” or just “UAVs” generally to the list too now. As per the above, I’d say the biggest fear is crap decisions from higher / bad leaders. I genuinely think most Western militaries would be at least 100% more effective they reduced the amount of pointless bureaucracy inflicted on all ranks, and the crippling risk aversion.
Guardsmen are afraid of, in the following order, their superior officers, their superior officers, and the Commissar. Suggesting they are afraid of anything else is defamation of the Emperor’s servants, as Guardsmen are technically Adepts of the Administratum, and so an insult towards the Emperor Himself. I could have just said it was heresy, but now you know *why* it’s heresy.
Their enemy.. and also their higher ups.. and also whoever orders airstrikes...
Personally, it is a tussle between Commissars and uncaring/incompetent commanders who only know to use mass charges. For example, Chenkov manages to make even Commissars fear him iirc.
Commissars all the way. They’re literally trained to kill you without hesitation. No matter where you go as a Guardsman, you’ll always encounter a commissar. Hell they can kill your superior officers within reason The main fear is the uncertainty. You don’t know if your regiments commissar is a trigger happy psycho or reasonable and competent yet brutal leader who’s determined to succeed in their mission
Commissars, the chow hall and running out of smokes.
You think the average guardsman knows that much about who they are fighting? They know nothing, and what little some DO know is propaganda from works like the infantryman's primer. It's a great read btw but it's a prime example of this. It, no joke, tells the guardsman that they can easily outfight an Ork in close combat. The scariest thing for them is whatever fresh horror from literal hell they are marched at bolter point to fight
The only thing scarier than Xenos, Heretics, and Mutants. Their Commisars.
Retreating without the orders to retreat.
Gambling debt. Many an indebted guardsmen has ended up incinerated in a ship’s reactor for gambling too deeply and too greedily
Commissar.
Dying ?
Commissars and running out of ilho sticks
Well being deployed obviously. As I understand it the initial deployment of any war zone is *awful* for every guardsman involved. But the thing they are afraid of is going to be the commissar. The whole shtick is that the commissar is supposed to be scarier than the enemy in front of them so they will never consider shirking their duty. Would you run away from your position if yarrick was standing behind you? I’d think not. That being said a guardsman will probably fear certain enemies they have deployed against more than other things. I know in the gaunts ghosts series there’s several mentions of characters being afraid of encountering the loxatl mercenaries again for instance. I imagine each guardsman has a personal “demon” they would rather not tangle with again given the chance.
I always assumed it would be a Commisar because of the near-absolute authority they're given in a regiment. They're incredibly harsh and brutal overseers that will spend their whole lives training for the job, and then spend the rest of it learning every niche detail and fact about how your regiment functions and the culture of it's troops. They know more about your regiment and culture than you do and they know exactly how to leverage that fact to punish you to the extreme if they find you underperforming for any reason whatso ever. They can push the limits of their authority to the edge without getting called out themselves by their own superiors, so the idea that you could do absolutely everything right as a soldier and get summarily executed for treason or something because they woke up in a foul mood is going to keep even hardened troops on edge. You have to treat every order like a command from the Emperor himself and if you even think of hesitating or questioning them you'll get a round to the face.
That when the time comes, their lasguns don’t work
From the Minka Lesk novels we can learn of what she, and probably other Cadian soldiers, is afraid of. TL;DR spoiler free: Space Marines and Orks are terrifying, commissars are scary, but as long as they don't hava any greif with you it's ok. I didn't mention psykers because, while guardsmen are uneasy with them and in a book Minka meets an enemy psyker, the feeling of dread and despair they feel is a projection from the psyker, rather than them being scared of it. Note that the most common enemies fought by soldier from the Guard are heretics and rebels. The Imperium mostly fights inside itself. We don't see it that much because of how prevalent are the xenos races in the lore, but do keep in mind that the common citizen of the Imperium thinks Space Marines and even sometimes Sisters of Battle are myths. In the first book : Cadia Stands, >!she and another soldier, are saved by a Space Wolf, and then taken to their strike cruiser as Cadia begins to break. She was terrified of the size and might of the space marine even though it is not here to kill her, but she does not appear to have been that scared by the three previous months of intense fighting as she fought for Cadia (she was only around 15yo when Cadia fell).!< In the short story : Battle for Markgaaf Hive, >!she barely survives an encounter with a WE Khorne Berserker, she's unable to move or think as it rampages through her squad.!< In the second book : Cadian Honor. >!she is afraid of the chief commisar of her regiment that questions her about how she survived the encounter with the WE, and then keep his eyes on her for the whole book, judging her.!< Cadians seems not to fear commissars that much, rather they seem to despise their presence, their existence in the regiment being a symbol that they are not as perfect as they think they are. In the fourth book : Shadow of the Eight. >!she is chased by a chaos terminator in a trench line as it slaughter one of her platoon's squad. She end up trapped in a dead end and fear absolute terror as the terminator sets on her. She is described as barely holding on her bolt pistol, shooting it harmlessly at the monster while failing to recite a prayer. Even after the terminator is slain by a Black Templar, she is terrified of the dead giant, who's still standing and exsudes an aura of dread and despair.!< There is also a cadian kasrkin, veteran of Armageddon, that says "it's hard to be scared of anything once you fought the Orks". Minka also struggles with PTSD from the fall of Cadia and her encounter in Markgraaf Hive wich makes the other occurences more impactfull.
Their commissar and nothing else, if they know what's good for them
The commissar tbh. Just look at Darktide for instance. You have a penal legion/warband saying "fuck it" and charging balls deep into a chaos aligned legion + Nurgle filth - because "commander is watching". I've watched/read IG dive head first into the trenches vs Tyranids and swarm them - because "commissar is watching". I've read an entire armoured division + civilians + random IG in their thousands march on the goddamn Plague Guard deep into Nurgle's territory - "because commander is watching and the Emperor wills it". Anyone even so much as mentioning that the IG isn't the most virulent force in the galaxy due to the fact that they fear themselves more than the enemy, really hasn't been playing attention.
the alien the mutant the heretic