Battle of Traitors Moss
The Battle of Traitors Moss was an engagement fought in 448.M41 between the 72nd Drookian Fen Guard and the forces of the separatist Canis Hegemony. Through deception the 72nd were able to ambush and destroy the larger separatist force.
During the seventeenth year of the war against Canis Hegemony, Imperial forces were hard pressed and isolated from their logistical support. The Imperial Fleet had become entangled in a war of control against pirates and dealers of Velo Opaline leaving the land forces of the Imperial Guard without support and incapable of reorganization. The high command were desperate to break this deadlock and the opportunity appeared when it was least expected.
The 72nd Drookian Fen Guard, under the command of Colonel Woortan, were exploring the planet of Aelian VII to prepare the way for an offensive against the Aelian system. The failure of the Fleet to destroy the pirates of Velo Opaline had led to the suspension of the offensive, which had left the 72nd isolated from the main body of the Crusade and forced the soldiers to rely on their own survival skills. Unfortunately, the enemy, XIIth Army of Canis Hegemony, chose this moment to move on Aelian VII.
The first sign of the enemies' intention was when a patrol of light cavalry of Drook ran into a unit of enemy explorers engaged in reconnaissance in the low territories of the central plateau of Aelian. Colonel Woortan ordered an increase in the number of patrols, but he gave instructions that they were to observe and not engage the enemy because he needed to discover what they were planning and did not want to reveal the presence of his small army. Woortan realized that if he could attract all enemy towards Aelian, onto the marshy zones that surrounded the low plains by the plateau, he could use the superior abilities of his army in such terrain to pin the enemy until the crusade forces arrived. Woortan ordered the capture of an enemy patrol and, after a series of brutal interrogations, he was able to obtain authentication codes and luminous landing signals, which he used to guaranteed that the enemy landing took place in the zone of his choice, an enormous chain of marshes and bogs that later would be known as Traitors Moss.
While the Fen Guard took positions in the bogs, the enemy began disembarkation. The separatist transports landed near the signals that the 72nd had captured from the enemy explorers. Each one of the ships carried hundreds of men and tanks. When the first touched the ground, it became evident that the terrain could not support the enormous weight of the disembarkation ship and, when it began to sink in the soft earth, the rest of the ships tried to alter their course. However, the approach vectors were already fixed and the great mass and inertia of the troopships meant that it was impossible to alter course on time. In a matter of minutes, the disembarkation ships became clogged in mud as their passengers desperately tried to escape. At this moment the 72nd attacked. They emerged from marshes like ghosts and cut down the traitors in the hundreds. The Mounted Guard of the Marsh ranged through the fog, annihilating without mercy the separatists with hunting lances. In less than an hour, enemy soldiers who had not been engaged by the men of Drook fled into the marshes and dispersed. The Drookians hunted the stragglers and those that did not die were taken as prisoners and handed over to the Crusade fleet when it arrived three months later.
During the Battle of Traitors Moss, fewer than 900 Fen Guards crushed a force of more than 20,000 separatists. The 72nd was granted Right of Conquest to the continent as reward for the victory.
