In Half-Life he's the squad leader, and the code says what happens if you do.

Valve's released Half-Life code builds each squad once, as the soldiers appear: one soldier gathers up to four others of his kind that he can see, and becomes their leader. He even gets a different head, swapped in by a line commented "UNDONE: truly ugly hack". He keeps the squad's two shooting and two grenade tickets (from our earlier film), and its memory of you: soldiers with fresh information write your last known position into the leader's data, and the rest read it back. When a squad first sees you, the others take cover while he signals and opens fire; a programmer's note says that hand signal "gives us enough time to hear a short sentence or spoken command before he starts pluggin away".

Shoot him first and his code runs "If I'm the leader, get rid of my squad". Nobody is promoted, though the comment heading that function still says "promote m_pSquadNext to leader". Out of a squad, each survivor gets every ticket (they can all fire at once), skips the check for a squad member in his line of fire and near his grenade, and keeps only what he sees himself. Reloading was never coordinated, so that part of the rumour isn't in the code.

These are Half-Life's soldiers as Valve's released game code has them (the Half-Life SDK, 2001). The hall, the soldiers, the cap and the fight's moves and timings are our own simplified version, built in code. Unofficial. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Valve.

Thanks to the viewer who asked under our squad film. Do you take out the leader first?

Sources: Valve's released Half-Life SDK, github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife: dlls/squadmonster.cpp, squadmonster.h, hgrunt.cpp, monsters.cpp.
Sounds and music: our own, made in code.