I know that, and how relatively specialist the Space Marine forces are whereas the Imperial Guardsmen are the vast bulk of the meatgrinder army. I was just curious as to whether the Generals had fought their way up through ALL the ranks from the lowliest guardsman, or whether they came in as officers due to space aristocracy.
If they had come from the lowest ranks, in my opinion that makes them even more bad-ass than a Space Marine, because surviving several battles and earning commissions as a guardsman must be crazy - you have no hulking armour or doomsday weapons, just a rifle and a 30 second life expectancy.
What I always go by is the fact that the 40k universe is so massive and the IoM is so full of different lifestyles that there probably always is a world that does have that kind of hierarchy.
I know for a fact that in Hive worlds there are classes, and that the upper hive is (again, iirc, its been a long time) in fact the aristocracy - though it would sound far more likely for the aristocracy to avoid getting summoned for war at all. I think they rather pay the IoM then to send their children away.
Once a guardsman leaves his homeworld hell never see his family again, due to warp travel and how time passes by. He could for example be in service for 10 years only to return home and find that his parents have been dead for a 100 years. But 99.9999% never see their homeworld again.
Hmm, but you got to keep in mind that a space marine will be only called if the situation is severe enough, thus negating the superior (everything)
