Francis Killebrand

Colonel Francis W. Killebrand was a commissioned officer in the COG Army during the Pendulum Wars and the early days of the Locust War. Aggressive, stubborn, and staunchly conservative, Killebrand believed that the Locust were dumb beasts, inferior to humans, and that humanity's situation post-E-Day was not due primarily to Locust strategic and tactical advantages or numerical superiority, but to cowardice, ineptitude, and an overeagerness to resort to extreme measures on the part of the COG and its soldiers. Killebrand advocated continuing the usage of strategies and tactics that had been proven effective during the Pendulum Wars, arguing that the Locust would not be defeated with new, unproven methods, but instead by tried and true COG military doctrine carried out by veteran soldiers and overseen by capable commanders. Supporters of Killebrand's methodology included Colonel Ezra Loomis, who, while eventually losing the city of Halvo Bay in 0 A.E., held the city for longer than any other commander had manged to hold a city in the face of a Locust onslaught of such scale, a fact Killebrand frequently used to promote his ideas (Killebrand also argued that the unauthorized deployment of an experimental weapon by an AWOL squad of Gears compromised Loomis' ability to hold the city).
Placed in charge of the defense of Turin in 5 A.E., Killebrand, in the interest of further proving the validity of his methods, manipulated the well-liked First Sergeant Gaston Bellamy into convincing over a thousand Gears to fight to their deaths, ordering Bellamy to hold a fracturing line in the face of impossible odds. When the line finally began to break, Killebrand famously told Bellamy that his remaining men would "neither fall back nor die until [he gave] them permission to do either."
These words prompted Killebrand's surviving men to betray orders under the de-facto leadership of the Gears of platoon Iota-357, falling back to the vehicle depot in the city center and bringing any civilian survivors they encountered with them. However, a furious Killebrand and a few still-loyal Gears and Onyx Guardsmen opened fire on the mutinous group at the depot, prompting a short firefight in which Killebrand was left severely wounded. Killebrand was nearly left for dead, but Sergeant Craig Randall, on principle, convinced his squad to go back and retrieve the wounded officer. Unfortunately, they arrived only just in time to witness Killebrand's execution at the hands of the Theron Sentinel Gornuk, whom would take Killebrand's head at the conclusion of the battle to present to Locust Supreme General RAAM.
Category:Gears of War: Dark Horse
Category:War of Nightmares