The 501st Journal

Transcript

My first day as a member of the 501st. It was hot. It was sandy.

Chaotic. Nothing at all like the simulations on Kamino. Of course, that's pretty much the way it was for all of us, wasn't it? All that breathing.

All those years of training. It doesn't really prepare you for all the screaming or the blood, does it? Frankly, I'm still amazed we ever made it through the first hour, never mind the first day.

Incredibly, the 501st survived the crucible of Geonosis, emerging battle-hardened and ready for whatever the war would throw at us. In the waning months of the Clone Wars, the 501st faced missions critical to the agenda of Chancellor Palpatine. When we arrived at the bombed-out ruins of Mygeeto, our Jedi Commander believed we had been sent to take out a droid energy collector.

What Ki-Adi-Mundi didn't know, however, was that our unit of the 501st was really after an experimental Mygeetan power source that the Chancellor wanted for his superlaser. Keeping Mundi in the dark wasn't easy. The Jedi had become increasingly wary of the Chancellor's doings and was on the lookout for the slightest hint of treachery.

Just like the rest of them, though, he never caught whiff of what was really going on until it was far too late. The success of the mission on Mygeeto was something of a revelation for the men of the 501st. Suddenly, we realized that Jedi could be fooled.

And if they could be fooled, they could be killed. As the Clone Wars progressed, more and more ground-based legions found themselves into space combat, including the fighting forces of the 501st. For months, every hour of our downtime was spent in a simulator, preparing for the time we would face our enemies in the cockpit of a 170.

Finally, the day had come to earn our wings. The CIS had staged a daring kidnapping of Chancellor Palpatine and was being escorted from Coruscant by a fleet of Separatist ships. With only a few veteran pilots on planet, many of the 501st were pressed into service to drive off the Seps and buy time for a pair of Jedi Knights to rescue the Chancellor.

After disabling the final capital ship, General Kenobi and Skywalker took advantage of the opportunity we created and rescued the Chancellor. Took all the credit, too. It's been said that the 501st got the best of the war.

We also got the worst. On Fallujah, the Seps dug their metal heels into the muck of that alien hellhole and dared the Republic to come in after them. So we did, only to be met with month after month of flesh-eating diseases, shrieking nocturnal predators, and other sights that haunt me to this day.

Cut off, and for all we knew, abandoned by our superiors. Our only hope was Aayla Secura, our Jedi Commander. Without her iron will, none of us would have come out of that mess with our sanity or our lives.

When her death came, I hope it was quick. She earned that much. When the 501st was finally rotated out of Fallujah, Aayla Secura made a point of seeing us off personally, calling us the bravest soldiers she had ever seen.

It's a good thing we were wearing helmets, because none of us could bear to look her in the eye. When the Separatists' invasion of Kashyyyk caught the Republic flat-footed, a detachment of the 501st was sent in to stop the bleeding until reinforcements could arrive. It was a textbook suicide mission, and we knew it.

As we fought our way into Kashyyyk's atmosphere, most of us believed that the only way we'd be getting off this planet was in a body bag. As the 501st finally broke through the Sep blockade over Kashyyyk, I took a long look back at the battle that continued to rage over the planet and wondered why so many had to die for a bunch of walking carpets. Then I followed my orders and turned planetward.

When we arrived on Kashyyyk, things were just as bad as we'd feared. The droids had us outgunned, outmaneuvered, and outmanned by a five-to-one margin. What none of us had counted on was the Wookiees.

We'd all heard the stories, of course. But we'd never fought next to them, never seen them rip apart a droid with their bare hands. They were magnificent.

Even so, it was still a suicide mission. At least, it was, until Master Yoda arrived. Then it became a battle.

A winnable battle. With the timely arrival of Master Yoda, the 501st were able to hold the line against the Seps on Kashyyyk. We left as heroes.

Years later, we'd return as conquerors. In our bones, we knew the war was almost over. The galaxy held its breath, waiting to see which side would make the final daring move.

As fortune would have it, the Republic moved first. After the Chancellor informed the Jedi Council that General Grievous and the Sep leaders were hiding on Utapau, General Kenobi gathered an army large enough to capture three star systems. When the orders reached the 501st, our morale soared.

For better or worse, this would be the beginning of the end. With the death of General Grievous at the hands of General Kenobi, the Utapau raid had broken the back of the Separatists. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a time for celebration.

But our next orders put paid to those thoughts. What I remember about the rise of the Empire is how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars, the 501st Legion was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant.

It was a silent trip. We all knew what was about to happen. What we were about to do.

Did we have any doubts? Any private, traitorous thoughts? Perhaps.

But no one said a word. Not on the flight to Coruscant. Not when Order 66 came down.

And not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word. With the fall of Coruscant and the elimination of the traitorous Jedi, Palpatine's rise to power was complete.

In recognition of our service and loyalty to the Emperor, the 501st were placed under the direct command of Lord Vader. Armed with deadly new weapons, blazing new ships, and shiny new armor, our presence let the galaxy know that the days of the Old Republic were well and truly over. We were establishing a new era.

An era of order and peace. During the rise of the Empire, the Emperor's home planet of Naboo rapidly established itself as a major irritant. After a number of Naboo's ambassadors were sent home in various states of dismemberment, her newly elected queen broke off diplomatic ties and began exploring military options.

Clearly it was time for a regime change. A change that would be affected by the 501st now under the direct command of Darth Vader. Our orders were simple.

To infiltrate the city, take out their leader, sending a clear signal to the other potential troublemakers in the Empire. With the queen eliminated, Naboo quickly fell into line. It was the first time the 501st was called upon to adjust a planet's government.

But it wouldn't be the last. Within months, the 501st gained a well-deserved reputation as Vader's fist. Although the Clone Wars were over, some people never seemed to get the message.

The worst case of denial was Geyser Delso, a Genosian Separatist who must have somehow escaped Lord Vader's efforts to wipe out the remnants of the CIS. Lord Vader tracked him to Mustafar and brought us in to finish the job. It seemed like a simple enough mission.

But when we saw the fleet of droid ships hovering over the planet, we suddenly realized that Delso's denial mechanisms were a little more dangerous than we had imagined. The slight whiff of nostalgia the 501st had enjoyed fighting the droid fleet over Mustafar had already grown sour by the time we'd established orbital positions. Now it was time to find out what this was all about.

By the time we'd made our way to the molten surface of Mustafar, it was apparent that Delso had been a busy little bug. All by his lonesome, he'd found a previously hidden droid factory, fired it up, and cranked out his own little private army of battle droids. Needless to say, this got the men of the 501st a bit hot under the helmet.

And not just because of all the lava. Truth be told, we'd all had our fill of those gearheads during the war, and we couldn't stump the thought of going through another one. So we blew them up.

Blew up the droids. Blew up the factory. Damn near blew up the planet.

The destruction of the mining facility put an end to any thoughts of a second droid rebellion. For the first time in years, the men of the 501st could relax and get about the business of maintaining an empire rather than building one. Officially, there never was a cloned rebellion on Kamino.

Unofficially, approximately 20 years after we were created, a special detachment of the Imperial 501st Legion was dispatched to Kamino with orders to eradicate an army of clones that had been bred to take arms against the empire. Our mission commander, an expert on the inner workings of Kamino, was a young bounty hunter named Boba Fett. The bounty hunter left after the battle was over.

He said something about tracking down a smuggler on Tatooine. After the Kamino uprising, the Emperor decided that an army of genetically identical soldiers was too susceptible to corruption. Future troopers would be cloned from a variety of templates, though the 501st itself was a complete mess.

Though the 501st itself remained pure, the rest of the Imperial army gradually became more and more diverse. We never really got used to the new guys. Once it was finally finished, the Death Star was the Emperor's favorite toy.

It was also the most boring assignment in the galaxy for a stormtrooper. Tedious inspection drills, endless hours of guarding impregnable force field generators. Things got so bad that when a prison break erupted in the cell block, we were almost happy to have someone shooting at us again.

If only we had known what an embarrassing snipe storm we were about to wade into, we probably would have jettisoned the whole detention block into space. After the embarrassment of the prison break, Lord Vader removed us from our comfortable belay and began dragging the 501st across the galaxy in a dangerous hunt for the now-missing Death Star plans. Ironically, our punishment eventually proved to be our salvation.

The poor souls who took place in the detention area were completely wiped out when the Death Star was destroyed. By the time of the raid on Polis Massa, the men of the 501st were starting to get a little sick of this so-called rebellion. In the past, we'd secretly enjoyed putting down a local insurrection or two.