Clone Commander Gree: A Patriot of the GAR

Clone Commander Gree: A Patriot of the GAR was a biography of Gree, a clone commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and how he and his 41st Elite Corps led the Republic to victory over the Separatists, the Empire to victory over the New Republic, and later to victory over the Yuuzhan Vong; it was also about how he helped redeem Separatist fleet commander Admiral Trench during the former objective, and how he was assisted in the latter two objectives by Mitth'raw'nuruodo (or Grand Admiral Thrawn) of the Imperial Navy.

War Portrait of Gree
The clone commanders, especially those trained to be ARC commanders by ARC trooper Alpha-17, were always an anomaly in the Republic clone army, what with their greater independent thought and creativity than the average clone trooper. Commander Gree, however, stood out more than the average commander. He possessed a keen interest in alien species and cultures, for more than one reason. He personally enjoyed learning about them for his own intellectual interests, but he also used his knowledge to learn new lessons about military strategy, and to help his unit, the 41st Elite Corps, forge alliances with local alien populations.

During the Clone Wars, Gree and his 41st Elite, with help from Jedi General Luminara Unduli, won many battles due to alliances with some aliens and understanding of the strategies of other enemy aliens. Once, they came across the Chiss, including the brilliant Mitth'raw'nuruodo, and the Outbound Flight, and learned about the Far Outsiders, dangerous, fanatical aliens who were coming to tear up the galaxy. General Unduli was not with them on this encounter. Gree talked about this with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and was promised that if he could do his part to help win the Clone Wars, he and the 41st would be rewarded with a chance to assist Palpatine with militarizing the future Imperial society in preparation for the coming war, though the Chancellor didn't yet mention the plans for a Galactic Empire to Gree.

In one of the Outer Rim Sieges, they came across a long-thought-dead Confederate Admiral, the legendary Trench, who had apparently survived his "demise" at the Battle of Christophsis. Trench and his battle droids were initially hostile, as was natural when clone troops and Seps were together, but after Gree shouted out that he wished the Confederate aliens would regain their senses and see that the galaxy needed order and unity, not chaos and separatism, Trench demanded to know what he meant. Gree said that unity brings people together and creates peace and order, while separatism caused conflict and chaos, and then went on to explain the coming of the Far Outsiders and how the people of the galaxy had to be orderly and militarlized to prepare to protect their homes from the Outsiders and other violent threats. Trench eventually saw the wisdom in this, and offered to defect to the Republic, on the condition that his Separatist faction, the Corporate Alliance, be allowed to convert, too. Gree talked to the Chancellor about it, and though Palpatine had intended to destroy the Corporate Alliance along with all the other commerce guilds of the Confederacy, he wanted order and unity even more, and consented.

After Order 66 and the extermination of the treacherous Jedi, in which Gree barely survived an assassination attempt by Master Yoda, the Republic became an Empire. Gree became a famous stormtrooper commander, and the 41st Elite was the second most renowned legion in the Stormtrooper Corps, after the 501st Legion. Gree and the 41st were even allowed to be honored by keeping their individualized soldiers' kits (weapons and armor) and getting a cure for their accelerated aging, while the rest of the stormtroopers were returned to all-white armor and different weapons and had to keep their abbreviated lives. Soon, Trench and Gree became friends, and also partners, in the Imperial Military, serving largely on and around alien worlds where aliens needed to be either allied with the Empire or defeated. They survived the Galactic Civil War, including the Battle of Endor, but, like the rest of the stormtroopers and Imperial fleet, failed to defeat the Rebels. After retreating from the battlefield of Endor, Gree and Trench hooked up with Gilad Pellaeon, an Imperial fleet captain, and almost five years later, they were partnered with Mitth'raw'nuruodo himself, now known as Grand Admiral Thrawn. The last Grand Admiral, seeing great potential in Gree, wanted to enhance his ability to defeat enemy alien species with knowledge of their cultures and customs. He taught the clone commander how to use knowledge of a species' art to understand that species.

Through the lessons of Thrawn, Gree became the second greatest strategist of battles against hostile aliens. The commander and Trench helped Thrawn and Pellaeon bring down the New Republic, seeing that like the corrupt Old Republic, it was too weak to stand up to the Yuuzhan Vong, and he used some clever artistic knowledge to stop the betrayed Noghri race from ruining Thrawn's plans (and his life). Then, decades later, when the Vong attacked, Gree, Trench, and Thrawn, led the 41st Elite and the rest of the Empire to victory against the Vong with the Empire's military might, and thus saved the galaxy.

After all this chaos, we can now say that clone commander Gree was one of our greatest heroes, brave, disciplined, principled, not unlike Thrawn, another of our greatest heroes, and that without them, the galaxy might now be in ruins. Thank the stars for the Empire.

Behind the scenes
This book is a what-if idea about how an individualist clone commander helped the Galactic Empire's best fleet strategist to defeat the New Republic and the Yuuzhan Vong. The part about Admiral Trench's redemption is an example of how even ruthless, "ugly" aliens can be capable of redemption.