Corporal Mathew Blackburn:
Nobody in the 833rd knew what to make of Coombs, Blackburn being as indecisive as the trooper sharing his foxhole. The captain was just as likely to pull your ass out of the fire as he was to send you in it. Mathew recalled the story of him bumrushing through a Tyranid army with all of his Chimeras and Crassus IFV's to save the remaining half of 12th Company, gunning the biomorphs down with multi-lasers, heavy bolters, and autocannons while promptly running over the surviving xenos. He pulled them out of Hell, and brought them back to the friendly line.
Later on, when the Tyranids started to target officers with a Dimachaeron, Edward used himself as bait. The Captain stationed a heavily camo-ed Medusa Seige Tank inside the ruins of a building. When the thirty-foot-tall monster appeared on the scene, screaming while leaping over tanks and infantry squads like nothing, the man merely stared it down. The Medusa slayed the beast with a single shot, right when it was lunging right for him.
Then there were the less flattering stories, such as when he shot his Catachan counterpart in the back when said officer scoffed at a challenge for a duel. The Catachans got held up by an outflanking Tyranid party, preventing them from reinforcing 2nd Company of the 833rd and leading to the deaths of over two hundred Harlech men. Of course, that is the official story, but it is interesting to point out that the Catachans didn't really care for Harlech regiments...
Then there was the time when Coombs ordered the bombardment of the location the survivors of the 21st Company (The Penal Company) when the line was about to be overran. Sure, they were criminals, but they are also Harlech men. Mathew considered them to be pseudo-kin, just like everyone else in the 833rd.
Regardless, Mathew never expected to Coombs alive. Just the day before the Exterminatus, a sergeant from the 2nd Company went into the command tent only to find slime, blood, and a long tunnel burrowed into the ground. It was assumed that a Ravener Brood managed to do what a Dimachaeron could not. So Mathew stands now, in a proper salute to a supposed dead man, fighting the urge to recoil away for some odd reason.
Captain Edward Coombs:
Coombs retracted his hand when he saw the purple-haired teenager cling onto Seras. She was a text-book example of a civilian, but that is not a negative thing in his books. "I'm sorry to say," he began, trying the best way possible to lay the news out without being too hard, "But what Seras said is true. Your friend is dead."
"Now," his face became more serious, "I would like you to come with me to help figure out what happened earlier today. The sooner I get the information I need, the sooner I can take appropriate measures against those responsible for the incident."
He scarred an then looked over to the wayward Guardsman (A Dragoon, he thought amused), "At ease. Name, rank, and regiment?"
