The Battle of Geonosis, later referred to as the first battle of geonosis, was the first
confrontation between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
We mainly saw this battle from the perspective of the main characters, but what was the battle
like for the average clone troopers?
First off, this battle was an absolute chaotic mess that unnecessarily caused a tremendous
amount of deaths of both Jedi and clones that could have been avoided had the confrontation
been better prepared.
At the battle’s climax, both sides were pretty much just throwing everything that
had at each other without any real proper strategy until near the end.
A 501st clone who survived the battle recollected his thoughts to a journal, stating how all
the training and simulations on Kamino hadn’t prepared any of them for the horrors and chaos
that was the battle of Geonosis.
The screaming of dying soldiers and the blood that spilled from them wasn’t anything like
what they clones had trained for.
The same 501st clone was later amazed on how they survived the first hour of the battle,
let alone the first day.
However after they won, he and his brothers emerged battle hardened and ready for whatever
fight the rest of the war had in store for them.
Probably the unluckiest clone to participate in the battle was CT 12 26.
He and his regiment were deployed to the front lines, where they were followed by heavy republic
walkers.
During his deployment the comlink in his helmet had a glitch which made it impossible for
him to communicate with his team.
Despite this setback he still pushed on.
Once they confronted a large force of droids, CT 12 26 was almost killed by friendly fire
when an AT TE walker malfunctioned and shot at his direction.
The blast knocked him into a crater which resulted in his helmet cracking and losing
its HUD systems.
When he came to he tried to climb out of the crater but quickly fell back in when he was
almost crushed by a Hailfire droid which rolled over him.
When he looked up through his broken helmet he noticed a few droids had discovered his
presence.
As the B2 Battle droid with the rocket launcher on its wrist was about to fire, the clone
quickly shot it down which resulted in the rocket to change course and hit the Hailfire
droid that passed over him earlier.
The destruction of the Hailfire droid gave a path for the other clones and republic walkers
to punch through the droid’s fortified line.
As they marched through, CT 12 26 got to safely and into a walker.
He later received a commendation for his actions on the battlefield.
One of the more dangerous jobs during the battle were tasked to the reconnaissance troopers,
who collected information on enemy activity on their speeder bikes.
Due to being separated from the main Republic forces, these scouts were very vulnerable
to enemy ambushes, with some super unfortunate scouts being literally devoured by multiple
acklays and nexus that were released from their cages and let loose into the battlefield.
Some clones even ran into General Grievous, who cut them all down as he was making his
escape.
Dooku ordered Grievous to ensure that no one knew of his existence, so he killed anyone
who saw him, from lone Jedi to entire clone battalions.
Even Clone Commandos had a rough time during the battle.
Delta Squad was one of the few commando squads to successfully achieve all of its mission’s
goals without losing a single member in its team.
Many of the other commando squads either lost most of their members or were completely wiped
out.
Of the 10,000 commandos present in the battle, nearly half didn’t make it off the planet
alive.
It was later deduced that the reason for their high casualty rate was due to the Jedi deploying
most of them alongside the regular infantry rather than as separate special forces.
In the aftermath tens of thousands of clones died during the battle.
All of their names were later etched into a giant memorial that was placed in front
of a republic military base on Coruscant.
Their sacrifices were never forgotten among their clone brothers.
All in all this battle was unlike anything most of the clones had trained for and a battle
that they would never forget.
The level of chaos of geonosis would be left unmatched until the battle of coruscant, where
separatist ships were pouring out of hyperspace and literally crashing into republic cruisers,
and hundreds of millions of battle droids flooded the streets of the planet.