Troopers Share Your Stories, Experiences

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Thought I would start a thread for troopers to share their stories, experiences, have read a few funny ones online lately.

 

This one is great Author: skywalker05 Website link http://www.fanfictio...trooper-s-Story

 

A Stormtrooper's Story

 

Almost everyone fears death. Almost everyone, more specifically, will try their hardest to evacuate the moon-sized battle station they're standing in if it's about to become a moon-sized explosion. I know Imperial stormtroopers aren't considered the brightest nerfs in the herd, but even we, even I, figured out that running was the best thing to do when the alarms started going off as the Rebels continued their barrage over Endor. People crammed themselves into shuttles and forgot rank as they fought for places.

 

So it wasn't very intelligent of me to stop, turn around, and look at the source of the scraping sound in an empty hallway, but when said source is your commanding officer being dragged away by Public Enemy Number One, wouldn't you look a couple times too?

 

Commander Skywalker looked at me with a blank stare. I was surprised that he could move Vader, limp as the armored body was; who knew what it weighed. It. No one ever really thought of Lord Vader as he, did they? I'm not even sure he's not a droid.

 

I pointed my blaster at Skywalker. I felt that it was the correct thing to do in this situation. Good old Imperial training, the subtle kind no one ever remembers learning, but it's so ingrained: If you don't know what it is or what's going on, shoot it.

 

My commanding officer, TK-117, said through my helmet comm, "Let them move along." Except he didn't. It wasn't his voice.

 

It wasn't through the comm, either, but I didn't realize that until Skywalker continued speaking without his mouth moving, his eyes boring through my mask like powerful men's eyes, in holodramas and such, supposedly do. He said, "Let us go. I'm saving him."

 

I tilted my head like a bird, confused. Why would Skywalker do that? How'd he get on the Death Star? Did it matter that Vader's armor was scuffing up the deck plates and someone would have the misfortune to be punished by having to clean them…if the station were about to blow up? My mind was wondering. The alarms, the crowds, the imminent explosion, and other such things jolted me out of whatever hypnotism had made them feel so unimportant. I spun and ran.

 

The ramp of the nearest open Lambda was almost shut when I reached it. I pounded my armored hands against the release pad, shouting on an open frequency for the pilot to let me in. Amazingly, he did. I was squashed in with thirty-five other panicky men in a hold built for max occupancy twenty, which is not fun let me inform you, but I did it. And amazingly, after the pilot gave me all the standard militaristic insults for slowing the launch down by something like point four seconds, he said he wasn't sure why he let me board. He sounded awfully confused. As confused as I had been, when I had decided to let Luke Skywalker drag Lord Vader away.

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Another found online

 

Imperial Stormtroopers

 

 

It is somewhat of a fad in the general sci-fi/fantasy fandom to call the Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars ineffective, cannon fodder, etc. There is even a so-called “Stormtrooper effect†in which the foot soldiers of evil are unable to act effectively. However, many common criticisms of Stormtroopers, listed below, are based on misconceptions.

“Stormtroopers lack visibilityâ€

The basis for the claim that while wearing their helmets Stormtroopers have poor visibility is based on exactly one line of dialogue from the original film, where Luke complains that he “can’t see a thing in this helmetâ€. There is absolutely no indication that this is in any way typical, and it is even noted just a few minutes later that Luke is short by Stormtrooper standards, implying that the helmet would not fit him very well. Additionally, Han, who is taller than Luke, did not complain of visibility while wearing a helmet.

Putting that aside for a moment, consider what would be necessary for this theory to be correct. Every significant person in the billions-strong Imperial military and bureaucracy would have have had to look the other way while the Empire was distributing helmets that were major problems for their troops. There would be either no or very poor inspections, quality control, or feedback.

“Stormtroopers couldn’t hit the broad side of a barnâ€

The evidence for this claim is usually that Stormtroopers seem incapable of hitting the main characters, the most famous instance being the shootout as the heroes are about to reach the Millennium Falcon and escape the Death Star. This objection completely ignores a major part of the story: the heroes were allowed to escape so that the Empire could track them to the base. This is noted within five minutes of the infamous shootout. In other instances where Stormtroopers are supposedly incapable of hitting targets, they are not trying to shoot to kill, but to capture or scare off (such as in Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back).

Additionally, just because Stormtroopers don’t have perfect aim when they are ordered to actually shoot their enemies does not make them bad soldiers. Neither real soldiers nor Stormtroopers are always able to hit their targets. It may seem easy to hit people when playing a video game, but needless to say, any system that allows someone to rack up dozens of kills in minutes is not a realistic portrayal of fighting.

“Stormtroopers were beaten by primitive Ewoksâ€

This is a gross simplification of the situations. The Stormtroopers captured the rebel team which assaulted the base extremely quickly, and took them outside. When the Ewoks made a surprise attack they attacked with effective weapons, large tree trunks and 20-pound rocks, not just bows and arrows. Even then, the Stormtroopers routed them and pursued them into the forest, winning by any reasonable standard until partially driven off by Chewbacca in an AT-TE. It’s also worth noting that the detachment at the secret back door was only a fraction of the legion on the moon.

“Stormtrooper armor doesn’t workâ€

The complaint here is that direct, full-on hits by blasters (powerful plasma weapons, for the uninitiated) are able to kill Sotrmtroopers. There are two problems with this. First, we see many Stormtroopers fall down after hits by blasters, sometimes with glowing holes in their armor, but we don’t know how many actually died. I feel like I shouldn’t have to point this out, but just because someone falls down doesn’t mean they were killed. Second, this complaint implicitly underestimates the firepower of blasters. Mere proximity hits are unable to kill unarmored individuals, and even Han Solo’s pistol is able to blast large chunks of concrete out of the walls of a starship’s docking bay.

Another variant of this complaint, related to the Ewok one, is that Stormtroopers were “killed†by rocks that the Ewoks threw. Again, it’s unknown how many died, but the Ewoks were throwing rocks as big as their heads, which must have weighed quite a bit. The Ewoks presumably have proportionally stronger upper body strength than humans, as do most primates in the real world. To expect Stormtroopers not to fall over in this situation would be to expect their armor to invalidate Conservation of Momentum, which is not something that any armor can do.

Conclusion

There are plenty of things to complain about in Star Wars, especially the Expanded Universe of books, comics, and video games, but to say that Imperial Stormtroopers are ineffective is simply not accurate based on the films they appear in.

 

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

And this one is from a post Daetrin had made back in 2006

 

Below are my thoughts from the perspective of my alter ego, TK(TD)8020.

 

OK, I just have to defend our guys in black and white.

 

First off, I was there in docking bay 94. Our orders were to stop the ship. The only reason that scruffy Correlian lived was because we weren't aiming for him. If we killed him and the ship got away we'd be disobeying orders, so everyone aimed for things like the insystem flight controls to keep them from taking off, or to cripple them so they couldn't run in case they did get off. That was the priority. Yeah, a few of us bought it, but not everyone had the opportunity to run for cover & there was a pretty powerful laser cannon swinging our way...I like to think we were able to soften up at least the lateral controls. My buds in orbit said it wasn't maneuvering all that well and they barely escaped.

 

Now I wasn't on the Death Star when all that hullaballoo went on (though I was earlier), but I talked to another of my buds who was, and he said that Vader had issued orders that those prisoners were not to be killed and to let them get away. So all that running around escaping bit you hear about? Well let me tell you they were only supposed to keep up enough fire to keep them running, not to kill them. At any cost. And the ship escaping? Same thing, he was in the docking bay (what a coincidence - both of us doing the same thing) and he told me that they were told just to aim to miss, e.g. let them get away. Why? Vader's idea. Dumb move if you ask me. So us guys in white did an outstanding job when you understand what was going on.

 

And the TIE pilots? Again, they kicked some major butt. Only two rebel ships plus that frieghter got away - the rest destroyed in ship to ship combat. Yeah, our TIE guys don't get nearly enough credit as they deserve.

 

Endor? Jeesh, I never hear the end of it. Listen, those guys were all ROADs (retired on active duty) and guys out of basic. Apparently the higher ups thought Endor duty was pretty low risk what with all the other hardware around, and it was just after holiday. Most of them were pretty toasted. And my cousin who's in intelligence and watched some of the classified security tapes told me that they were very much outnumbered, more so than the general public was led to believe. As if a small band or so locals could defeat troopers. As if. There were a lot more of those little fur coats around and a lot of them bought it before our troops were overwhelmed. Dirty little secret the rebels didn't want to reveal - made them look much tougher than they really were.

 

OK long story short. We've gotten a lot of flack and some writers and what not have tried to lump us in with the sorry suckers of other military forces, but the reality of the situation is that we're the elite, and don't go down as easily as we're made out to be.

 

TK/TD-8020

[Spectre]

These are quite good.

I don't have much (anything) to add though, I haven't looked that deep into this sorta thing.

[zebrabuse]

I've seen some things man...