Militarum Veteran Squad

FUCK OFF YOU RED CAPPED NOB!

Imperial Veteran Squads are the hardcore Guardsmen who have proven themselves with their colossal badassary by being the only survivors of their parent company or even regiment, they are usually attached to other, newly-formed regiments in order to pass on their hard-won skills to the new recruits. Their constant survival in just a T-shirt has earned them massive brazen balls of adamantium unlike those power armored faggots. How hardcore are they? Well they are often the first squad in an assault and the last in retreat. Fucking Manly. Keep in mind most regiments do not survive their first deployment. These guys, though, don't have that problem. So, they're often still going to be the only survivors of their regiment by being attached to noob regiments repeatedly.

Overview

They are given greater freedom of operation than other squads and access to a wider array of equipment as well, along with whatever they can loot from the battlefield or otherwise "borrow" from other friendly units. In other words they're pretty much given the freedom to do and use whatever the fuck they want so long as they keep kicking ass. If what they want is rare or too limited even for them, they're allowed to loot or steal it. Compared to normal infantry squads they tend to carry a greater number of squad support weapon including grenade launchers, mole launchers, solo boltguns, flamers, sniper rifles, plasma guns, meltaguns and even a heavy flamer. Some are organised as grenadiers and wear carapace armour for additional protection, while others operate as forward sentries and equip themselves with camo-cloaks and snare mines. Still others specialise in demolition and carry a disturbing amount of explosives in the form of melta bombs and demolition charges.

A Regiment that has been reduced to the point when there are just a few Veterans left (usually just one survivor, sometimes a squad, more than that is rare and in extreme cases an entire company) are combined with a new Regiment in the hope that their skills will rub off onto the new men. Many of these Veterans may not be from the Regiment or even the same home world, and so may introduce brand new combat-tactics and an entirely different war-ethic to their foster regiment. They are also Tactical Geniuses as they often employ unconventional, but effective tactics such as the use of booby traps that are not taught by the Tactica Imperialis. Veterans excel in all aspects of warfare, from close-range firefights to heavy demolitions work. In other words, to survive they had to be naturally talented badasses with a born genius in every form of warfare or else they'd have died. The odds of this happening are low enough that any survivors from any regiment's first combat action are rare and most regiments are made up of the most talented handful of soldiers from Planetary Defense Forces who themselves are usually well trained (despite their reputation with the Guard).

They are one of those guys who will be BLAMing the Commissar and asking them to fuck off rather than the other way round and are known to intimidate the red caps until they soil themselves and know their place. A moment when the Commissars learn the Imperium has survived so long by valuing experience and results over any amount of titles or on-paper authority. Most Veterans often use the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer as literal toilet paper and can get away with it due to their accomplishments and massive balls. And because the people who would be responsible for executing them for this are scared to death of them. They are often seen as an inspiration to newer Guardsmen and highly respected because of it.

Sometimes their renown earns them the honor to be recruited under a Inquisitor's retinue. These Veteran Guardsmen will use their skills and expertise to combat a wide range of enemies for the Inquisitor. They are sometimes employed to act as a bodyguard for a Inquisitor or as a secondary 'eye' to keep a lookout for any would-be assassin. You know you're badass when an Inquisitor wants you to kick the ever-hating shit out of his enemies and even trusts his back to you to deal with (or at least slow down) assassins...who are usually superhuman/superalien in 40k even outside the Assassinorum.

Cadia had the highest proportions of Veteran Squads as it sat next door to the Eye of Terror and was thus the most iconic of the Veterans. Cadia's recruitment practice was to create regiments of white shields (Guardsmen by every other worlds' standards) and then put them through the grinder against daemons and whoever survived got to become a Guardsman. So, it is likely that some or most Cadian regiments are entire Regiments of Veterans gathered together from the survivors of White Shield regiments.

The Guardsmen of "All Guardsmen Party" (writefaggotry and also on YouTube) are an example of Hardened Veterans (and they were recruited by an Inquisitor).