Colonel Badass / Literature

• in Terry Mancour's The Spellmonger Series, Bold Asgus, Commander of the Orohan's band. He oozes command and confidence. Proficient with almost all weapons, he is a one man wave of death on the field of battle. The man launched himself onto a troll and killed it with one hit. Then he dismounted into a double decapitation of nearby Mooks.
• The Discworld's Sam Vimes may be the Commander of the City Watch and even a Duke, but despite the protests of both his wife and the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, refuses to delegate the street jobs to his subordinates, being happiest when walking the streets in cardboard-soled boots in the rain or chasing a dangerous criminal. He abhors the politics he's forced to participate in, and still basically sees the world like a beat copper.
• Col. Fedmahn Kassad of Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos fights his way through the exploding wreckage of an enemy fleet, plummets down onto a planet and then fights the soldiers there. Later, he gets into hand-to-hand combat with the Shrike, a giant, indestructible Eldritch Abomination covered in spikes. Did we mention it can move faster than light? He is explicitly stated to be the greatest soldier in history which is why godlike A.I.s use his consciousness to create the Shrike.
• Older Than Radio: Max Piccolomini, colonel of a cuirassier regiment, in Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein trilogy (1798-1799). Which unsurprisingly features a number of war-hardened colonels.
• In his 1884 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain gave us Col. Sherburn who shoots a drunk who only annoyed him and gets away with it by scaring the lynch mob away with a Breaking Speech.
• Colonel Sebastian Moran in the Sherlock Holmes stories. In addition to being Professor Moriarty's right-hand man and top assassin, he's a decorated war hero and celebrated big game hunter who once crawled down a sewer drain after a wounded man-eating tiger.
• While not Colonel, Major Greer from The Passage qualifies.
• Warhammer 40,000 novels:
  • Two in Warhammer 40,000: Gaunt's Ghosts: Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt and his subordinate, Col. Colm Corbec. Gaunt has a head-start in that he's already a Badass Longcoat, but Corbec makes a rather good accounting of himself as well.
    • As of his promotion, Col. Elim Rawne also neatly fits the trope.
  • Col. Shaeffer of The Last Chancers. He can stroll up and down a battlefield filled with Orks and Tyranids like he was on parade, decapitating Carnifexes and seeing the whole battle through without a scratch. At the same time, the hardened criminals of the 13th Penal Legion absolutely fear him more than those same Orks and Tyranids.
  • Let the Galaxy Burn: Commisar von Klas. He's kidnapped and enslaved by a kabal of dark eldar, kills an eldar wych in one-on-one close combat, kills his torturer with his own weapons, then organises a break out which dooms the entire kabal to be defeated by a rival faction. The story ends with him telling his former master "They will cut my throat like some common animal. I suspect, however, you will take much longer to die."
  • Col. Regina Kasteen of the Valhallan 597th is more noteworthy for her strategic and tactical skill than her record at personal combat, but she's no slouch at the latter. In fact, during The Traitor's Hand, she's positively glad to have a chance to get stuck in, potting traitors with her bolt pistol as they storm her headquarters. Of course, her backstory — that she attained her command by default, being the most senior member of her regiment who was not eaten by Tyranids — attests to impressive badass credentials all by itself.
• Count Dokhturov in War and Peace. Calm, methodical, the perfect man to have fighting for you. Tolstoy devotes most of a page describing why people like Dokhturov are never considered heroes despite the fact that battles would be lost without them.
• Admiral Jane Roland and eventually Laurence himself after his promotion to admiral in the final book in Temeraire. Jane casually breaks swords in people's chests, wins massive air battles on the back of her acid-spitting dragon and generally impresses everyone she meets. Technically, Temeraire himself also counts in book 5.
• Lt.Col. Du Bois in Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. He taught the main character's History and Moral Philosophy class, and the character was startled that the old man had been both a Lt.Col. in the infantry and a classmate of his Drill Sergeant Nasty, Sergeant Zim.
• Col. 'Lizard' Tirelli (from The War Against the Chtorr sci-fi series by David Gerrold) is so badass she single-handedly flies jet-assisted helicopter gunships in her spare time. It's hinted almost immediately that she's a lot more important in the military and governmental power-structure than her nominal rank would indicate.
• Mostly inverted in the Sharpe series, except when Sharpe himself attains the rank. Much of the conflict in the series is driven by various Upper-Class Twit officers. While not technically a colonel, Sharpe often fulfills a Colonel's duties as his regiment tends to go through colonels like disposable cups.
• There are few colonels in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but several Commanders.
  • Commander Wedge Antilles: A fighter pilot who flew against both Death Stars and rose to become the leader of Rogue Squadron, the Alliance's best fighter squadron. Instrumental in the retaking of Coruscant from the Empire, the negotiating of a cure for the Krytos disease, the taking of Thyferra, the capture of a Super Star Destroyer, the death of Ysanne Isard (twice!), and the campaign against Warlord Zsinj. Then he finally accepted promotion to General. (Weirdly, he was never a colonel, even though, depending on the source, colonel is a half-notch above commander.)
  • Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo: A member of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet, Thrawn was born a commoner and gained status through military service, becoming a merit adoptive of the Eight Ruling Family and further becoming a trial-born. He was the youngest ever Force Commander in the Expansionary Fleet, using brilliant and undeniably effective but underhanded tactics, often involving preemptive strikes, that were seen as morally bankrupt to his people. Sometime after the events of Outbound Flight he was exiled and wound up in Imperial service, where he very quickly rose through the ranks until becoming one of the thirteen secret Grand Admirals.
  • Hand of Thrawn: Supreme Commander Gilad Pellaeon: "Supreme Commander" is actually the highest military rank in the Empire, so this properly belongs in Four-Star Badass. But "Commander" is part of the rank, so he gets a mention here. He also was a captain for a while, which is roughly equivalent to a colonel.
  • There was at least one colonel. When Wedge's wingmate Tycho Celchu took command of Rogue Squadron, he took this rank.
  • Before he defected to the Rebel Alliance, Soontir Fel was a Baron-Colonel. His badassery is unquestionable; after Vader's death, Baron Soontir Fel was perceived as the best pilot in the Empire, bar none (and without Vader around, rumors started spreading that Vader's only edge was in his expensive custom starfighters). He lost that rank when he joined Rogue Squadron, but it may be assumed that he got it back, and more, in the Empire of the Hand after Thrawn had him kidnapped and brought there.
  • Other real colonels (okay, lieutenant colonels are among them) would be Jaina Solo (being a member of Rogue Squadron at the age of sixteen, seriously kicking around numerous Yuuzhan Vong, later on being in command of Rogue Squadron just to be court-martialed by her own twin brother whom she later on kills in a duel after he turned out to have become a Sith), her brother Jacen Solo (became head of the secret police of the Galactic Alliance, tortured Boba Fett's daghter to death, became a Sith Lord, made himself joined head of state and later on sole head of state of the Galactic Alliance, set half of Kashyyyk on fire, killed his aunt Mara, etc. until his sister finally got him), and Jagged Fel (who (nearly) manages to keep up with Jaina Solo and Kyp Durron, two extremely talented Jedi pilots using a battle meld, and displays various feats of general badassery until he finally becomes the Imperial head of state).
• Colonel Jesse Wood, from the 1632 series arguably qualifies, being the very first pilot in the new timeline created by the Ring of Fire. Because of that and his service in the uptime US Air Force, he's appointed head of downtime's new Air Force.
• Patrick McLanahan from Dale Brown's books spends some time as this in earlier books, before receiving his stars at the end of Fatal Terrain. He's not the only character in the books to go through this phase, though.
• Colonel Rosa Klebb of the Soviet SMERSH in Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love. In the film version she defects to the terrorist organization SPECTRE and fails to kill James Bond with a poison-tipped dart in her shoe but she is still a Russian agent and succeeds in poisoning Bond and almost killing him with the shoe dart at the end of the book.
• Colonel Christopher Williams in Tranquilium. He starts out as a charming Reasonable Authority Figure the main character meets in Port Elizabeth, then quickly proves his badass credentials by showing that yes he can thwart stage one by rallying the militia to defeat the KGB-led rebellion in the town and so saving the main characters from the rebels in the process. It is subsequently revealed that he is (was, as of Part Two) also an Almighty Janitor to the Merryland government and a former FBI agent who was a literal Mulder who eventually became fed up with his superiors' adamant refusal to notice Tranquilum and Soviet shenanigans therein and went native to fight a one-man-war. He's also firmly an antihero, and an awesomely ruthless one at that, going about and taking out Soviet spies with his crack squad of Forbidders and using torture to bring down a huge part of their information network. He is also scarily good at one-shotting would-be-prominent-villains on the Soviet side, sometimes across dimensions.
• Codex Alera: While Aleran Legions are commanded by Captains, they don't use modern military ranks and their role tends to fit this trope better. As usual, the most badass of the lot is Captain Rufus Scipio (a.k.a. Tavi) a Badass Normal capable of taking on Knights and Canim by himself.
• In the Legacy of the Aldenata, there's Colonel Cutprice, a rejuvenated Medal of Honor winner and one of the most decorated Korean War veterans. Later, he's leader of the Ten Thousand, an elite fighting group arguably more badass than the ACS as a whole, as the Ten Thousand fight without the benefit of Powered Armor. It's explicitly stated that he refuses promotion above the rank of Colonel.
• From Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising:
  • There's an unnamed Soviet colonel who only shows up in a single scene, in charge of a tank division after his general was killed in an air attack. Although his narrative role is to provide the perspective of a Soviet mid-ranking officer (the POV character, Alekseyev, is a Four-Star Badass, through whom we see the big picture), the colonel proves to be extremely competent at commanding his division, nearly forcing a breakthrough and stymied only by the NATO defenders' resilience and Soviet high command's insistence that only Moscow can move the strategic reserves. He is last seen as the survivor of an artillery barrage on his headquarters, surrounded by the wounded, and still calmly giving orders to his division.
  • The also unnamed KGB colonel who set the Kremlin bomb - he later goes on to set another Kremlin bomb and kills four men with his silenced automatic. Bonus points for being a Badass Longcoat too.
  • Colonel Douglas "Duke" Ellington, the F-19 Ghostrider pilot who provided the main point of view character for the central front air war in Germany and the Soviet colonel commanding the MiG-29 regiment at Keflavik both also qualify (both demonstrate their Ace Pilot skills numerous times, the MiG-29 regiment CO survives leading his pilots in a battle against two full squadrons of F-14 Tomcats at one point, while Ellington also gets to demonstrate his all-around badassery by managing to successfully escape and evade after being shot down over hostile territory late in the war).
• Colonel Sir Nigel Loring of the Emberverse (also late of the Blues and Royals). In a universe where much technology (including guns) suddenly ceases to function, he helps rescue the Queen and the Royal Family, trains his troops in the "new" fighting methods, makes sure his soldiers' families are safe, makes a daring escape from captivity, comes to the aid of the Crown Prince in battle, and outwits the Lord Protector of Portland. Only then, does he hook up with the main plotline!
• The Colonel (technically, Lieutenant-Colonel) in George MacDonald Fraser's McAuslan stories, based on a real commander of the 2nd Gordon Highlanders. He is quiet, unassuming, looks like a vulture, and walks with a limp (his leg having been broken by the Japanese as a PoW). He's over retirement age and has served with the battalion since 1914, wounded at Passchendaele and captured at Singapore. But he is highly respected, a Father to His Men, "looked the Japanese in the eye on the Moulmein Railway and said 'no'", and at eighty went into the streets of Belfast with a patrol from his old regiment, just to see what things were like for the new generation.
• Horatio Hornblower is promoted to Commander at the end of Lieutenant Hornblower, only to be demoted back to Lieutenant and put on half-pay when the French and English declare an armistice. He is promoted back to Commander at the start of Hornblower and the Hotspur, where his exploits eventually earn him a promotion to Captain. In a later book, he is appointed as a Colonel of Marines, a sinecure position granting him extra pay with no extra responsibilities, as an indicator that the Crown is pleased with his performance.
• Lieutenant-Colonel Munro of the 60th Foot (Royal American Regiment) in The Last of the Mohicans.
• D'Artagnan in The Vicomte de Bragelonne — as a lieutenant and captain of the king's Musketeers he becomes the equivalent of a colonel and major-general of the regular army.
• William H. Kraft of Victoria is an eccentric example, since he considers himself a subject of the German Emperor and leads his armored battalion through the campaign to defend New York dressed in a blue, late 19th-century Prussian greatcoat and Pickelhaube. Notwithstanding, he is both a savvy political operator and an absolutely terrifying enemy.