Oktober Guard

## Background

The Oktober Guard is a special military unit of the Russian Army, originally formed in 1981 after the Soviet Union withdrew from the Action Force project. Plans for a unit of around fifty operators were rapidly dropped due to a lack of qualified personnel, combined with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Hopes to supplement the Soviet operators with some from the Warsaw Pact nations dwindled in the face of poor standards. The unit ended up as a squad-size element of six operators, only two of whom were from the Warsaw Pact nations.

Nonetheless, the group was still given high-profile missions, such as recovering a downed US recon aircraft from Afghanistan, securing a lost US Navy submarine in the Baltic and testing a prototype laser weapon in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for the Guard, each of those missions ended in ignominy as the GI Joe team secured the wrecked plane, only to learn US operatives had retrieved the most critical components days before; the submarine was a decoy created by the Joes to extract a high-level defector from under the Guard's noses and the laser weapon was a stolen US unit which the Joes retrieved.

In 1990, the Guard suffered its darkest day as four of the six operatives were killed on a mission to Sierra Gordo to rescue the rebel leader El Jefe in the hopes of his becoming pro-Soviet once in power. The survivors were extracted from the Central American state with a GI Joe team and returned to the Soviet Union.

Following this, the Guard gained the first of several new members, taking its strength first to four and then to five with the appointment of new CO, Red Star. In 1991, the Guard cooperated with Action Force to ensure the delivery of spent nuclear fuel rods to a disposal facility in Russia after they were brought over from Brazil. 1994 saw further increases in the Guard's ranks as new communications, intelligence, airborne, anti-armour and frogman specialists joined among others. The Guard's headquarters were attacked by the Red Shadows that year, leading to the destruction of its air defences and other facilities. After Action Force discovered the location of the Red Shadows headquarters in Georgia, the Guard participated in a joint operation with Action Force and a GI Joe Steel Brigade team to destroy the base. During this mission, the Guard operative Molot was killed. The Guard later moved to a smaller, older base with a lower profile. General Iron Bear was appointed CO to avoid difficulties in dealing with other CIS nations' militaries. Red Star instead became the field commander and second in command. In 1995, the Guard clashed with both the Black Dragon and Skull Squad mercenary groups, thwarting the former's attempts to take over a town in the Caucaus Mountains and the latter's attempts to steal nuclear warheads and deliver them to The Coil.

## Key Personnel

Colonel Brekhov - First CO

Daina - Czech sniper and helicopter pilot. First female member and only non-Soviet nation operative remaining.

Schrage - East German infantryman, one of the two non-Soviet members in the original Guard.

Red Star - Second CO, now field commander and second in command. Ukrainian.

General Iron Bear - Third CO, full commander.

Dragonsky - Russian flamethrowers specialist. Only other survivor of original Guard.

Akula - Commando Frogman. First Russian Navy member.

Berkut - Fighter pilot. First fast jet pilot. Ukrainian.

## Stories

The Oktober Guard appears in the following stories:

International Heroes

War of the Red Shadows

Black Oktober

Nuclear Oktober

## Notes

I've expanded the Oktober Guard's roster beyond the few characters seen in the comics, and toyline, by adding Wong from the cartoon, Ruslan from a single issue of Devil's Due's comics, General Iron Bear from the 2012 Joecon set and a lot of original characters. I don't like the idea of the Guard being so small.