Allllrighty. I had a few thoughts about a few different legions this evening. Will try and avoid Wall of Txt Syndrome [what can I say - I've got IVth on the brain ... we see something to be locked down, we build a wall on it].
First up, we have the Word Bearers. Now there are, obviously, any number of military forces over the millenia who have wholeheartedly embraced the idea of being Holy Warriors. It's a pretty potent and useful mechanism for building up/sustaining morale and Elan. And there's nothing like the righteous fervor of fighting an apostate-anathema for motivation.
But there are very different 'styles' if you like of Holy Armies, and I'd contend that just lumping them all together actually hides some serious differences (which are going to be somewhat instructive when it comes to talking about the Legion's engagement style and ORBAT development).
At their inception, we have the XVIIth acting in two or three roles. The first one of which is as something of a diplomatic corps - rolling up to the gates of an enemy settlement, issuing their ultimatims to cut it out with the religious practice and accept the Imperial Truth ... and then either dying after a protracted struggle against those not so keen to hear their message, or presumably assisting with the rebuilding of that society more along 'acceptable' Imperial lines.
The point of analogy for this is, arguably, not so much 'religious warriors' as special operations forces, with a dash of prelate and Herald [hence their original name]. A Green Beret of the 'fanatical anti-communist' flavour dispatched off up into the highlands, perhaps, who winds up finding something overly "collectivist" in the tribe he's sent to contact and reacting accordingly. Followed up by a full-blown "Total War" destruction-force after he gets turned down. "Apres moi, le deluge", indeed. [this latter phase might put one in the mind of some of the activities of the SS on the Eastern Front...]
Perhaps pre-their-own heresy WOrd Bearers might be regarded as comparable to the Teutonic Knights - particularly around the time of the Prussian Crusade. There, we had a force of heavily armed and armoured men (men, it must be remembered, so considerably above the levies they also went into battle with) who took the fight to the heathens of the Baltic (who, at this time, were still nominally pagan) with the aim of evangelism. There are, of course, numerous other examples of 'holy warrior' or zealot troops (including hte literal Zealots/Sicarii) drawn from history and fiction (the mind instantly recalls a litany of Levantine and further East examples); but it's occasionally questionable as to how appropriate the operational comparisons are with Astartes warfare, as many (but not all) of these forces tend to operate as light infantry for a variety of reasons (the Mujahideen, for instance, or Hezbollah). Somebody's already mentioned ISIS - and perhaps there is an instructive parallel there, given the effort which ISIS has put upon capturing and destroying sites of archaeological significance [which is certainly what hte 'Iconoclasts' are around for]. [another obvious point of reference would be the Taliban - both in general, and via doing things like blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas]
Anyway, things start to change rather severely when they make their transition over to the side of the Great Enemy (predictably) - not just due to their newfound predilection for DECIDEDLY asymmetric warfare (in the form of warpcraft, conjuring warpstorms, slicing their way through reality as a rapid-deployment method, and all the rest of it ... to say nothing of employing both daemons and daemon-possessed shock troops) ... but ALSO because we start to see their incorporation of un- or less-augmented human detachments (represented by the Imperialis Militia/Warp Cults list).
The battlefield role for Warp Cults ranges from simple screening-troops and cannon-fodder (there's the lines in the relevant Black Book about Ultramarine forces having to expend waaaay too much of their ammunition gunning down cultists so that they're in a less-prepared position to deal with hteir twisted masters) through to strategic redirection and distraction (i.e. "we've got to deal with the ten thousand screaming cultists over *here* ... and hope like hell that the isolated strongpoint a few kilometers over *there* can hold out by itself because we just can't spare the troops"). I would also contend that it's quite likely for the cultists in questoin to be used for um ... well, to put it bluntly, like how Grotz are stated to be used by Ork forces. That is to say, mine-clearing (without being combat engineeers, if you get my drift) recon-in-strength (or, at least, numbers masquerading as strength), and all hte rest of it. Oh, and on top of this, the effect of engaging Warp Cults on the average Imperial Soldier or even Marine must have been seriously rattling. Youv'e got absolutely fanatical troops dying in droves who just /keep coming/. Walk straight through minefields in perfect order; and are probably mutated, covered in sigils that hurt the eeyes, and screaming or chanting the whole time. In other words, "shock troops" after a sort.
Now, all of the above reminds me VERY STRONGLY of one modern force in particular. And despite what some might be thinking ... no, it ain't the Soviets.
Instead, it's the Basij Militia as employed during the Iran-Iraq War by the Iranians. Particularly due to the way it operated as a separate (and decidedly less competent/well-equipped) force to the conventional Iranian Army - esp. in the mmid phases of the conflict. (which is actually where things started to go seriously awry - as the forces stopped acting in co-ordination, at least partially due to political pressures, so the massed human wave attacks of the Basij which had been so successful in concert with conventional military (tanks, air attacks etc.) in the early war when driving the Iraqis out of Iran ... weren't nearly as useful once the fighting started taking place on the Iraqi soil in '83/'84 in hte absence of such support).
The particular incident which reallyd rove this home for me was reading about Operation Before The Dawn which was carried out in February of 1983 toward al-Amarah. There's probably an element of propaganda in reports and estimates that the literal /tens of thousands/ of casualties sustained by the Basij (who occasionally weren't even armed) were the result of Shi'ite drives toward martyrdom ... but the fact remains nominal zealots that attempting to clear a path through the defensive lines, obstacles and minefields of the Iraqis for better troops, armour and all the rest of it ... is pretty much exactly how I view the Word Bearers operating.
There's also other elements drawn from the Iran-Iraq war (on both sides) which resonate (at least somewhat) with Calth etc. - in particular, the Iraqis' decision to undertake crippling surprise attacks on Iranian staging points via both chemical and conventional weapons; as well as the subsequent War of the Cities (because really, attempting to obliterate major population centers as a morale-tool is pretty much one of the things that the betrayal at Calth was ... in addition, obviously, to helping to seriously mess up logistics and communication-lines via the Ruinstorm, and crippling Imperial forces in the area in a combination of surprise attack, bombardment, decisive battle, and tarpitting through the Underworld War).
Now as applies the Word Bearers themselves ... a few other points potentially spring to mind.
The Gal Vorbak themselves remind me for some reason of the stories about North Korean troops during the Korean War being dosed up on methamphetamine or whatever, and then sent careening towards Allied/UN lines - with their limbs bound by thick ropes to both absorb somewhat bullet impacts, as well as to keep their limbs slightly together and functional in cases of broken bones from percussive impact shock. We can also draw a broader analogy between the general zealot disposition of the Word Bearers and their 'human' cohorts and the widespread use of amphetamines and other stimulant drugs in Middle Eastern conflicts such as the one presently raging in Syria. [I personally think that a lot of the attrocity level stuff happening in particular wars has quite a lot to do with whether the troops in question are on these sorts of drugs - c.f the SS and Pervitin - but that's a bit of a digression. Certainly provides a bit of a template for force-behavior -the comparison between being jacked up on meth versus jacked up on warp-dust]
The use of propaganda-warfare by ISIS is also something resonant with the WOrd Bearers' way of war. As we can see a pretty direct parallel between execution videos and all hte rest of it with the XVIIth's flooding of comms relays with pretty messy sounding stuff [particularly because one of the impicitly desired effects of both of htese things is as a recruitment tool - although an Imperial trooper whose mind breaks upon seeing a chaotic sigil appear on a vidscreen may be a bit of a different kettle of fish from somebody who flies cross-continents to join up with ISIS].
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