A male clone trooper fought in the Siege of Mandalore during the Clone Wars, ultimately dying on Mandalore, the very planet where the battle unfolded. Following the siege, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine issued Order 66, causing the Republic's clone forces to betray their commander, Ahsoka Tano. However, Tano managed to evade execution with the assistance of another clone, Clone Commander Rex. To conceal their survival, Tano and Rex staged their deaths, creating a fake grave for Rex and burying the body of a clone in Rex's armor.
This clone trooper was engineered by Kaminoan cloners on the planet of Kamino as a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. In the closing days of the Clone Wars in 19 BBY, a conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the trooper served within the 332nd Division, a sub-unit of the 501st Legion. This division was deployed to Mandalore to aid former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano and the Mandalore resistance in their fight against the Shadow Collective and its leader, the Sith Lord Maul. During the Siege of Mandalore that followed, the clone trooper met his death.
The siege culminated in a Republic victory with Maul's capture. However, soon after the battle, Order 66 was executed. This secret command, orchestrated by the Sith, designated all Jedi as traitors and mandated their immediate execution. The clones, compelled by implanted inhibitor chips, were forced to comply. Despite her departure from the Jedi Order, Tano was still considered a target. She managed to escape the 332nd alongside Clone Commander Rex, who had previously removed his chip.
To feign their demise and evade the newly formed Galactic Empire, Tano and Rex retrieved the clone trooper's remains. They buried him in Rex's armor and erected a gravestone inscribed with a false narrative. The inscription claimed that Rex had heroically eliminated the traitor Tano before succumbing to his own injuries. However, the identity of the supposed killer was as fabricated as the rest of the deception. As the two fugitives separated to go into hiding, Tano left her lightsabers on the grave to enhance the illusion. Before departing, she paused, placing her hand on the gravestone, reflecting on the man interred there and those who were not.
Being a clone derived from the bounty hunter Jango Fett, the trooper was a human male. He possessed a height of 1.83 meters (6 feet), a weight of eighty kilograms, and tan complexion.
A flashback in the novel Ahsoka, penned by E. K. Johnston and released in 2016, references this clone trooper. The novel's depiction of the trooper's burial in Rex's armor clashes with the animated series Star Wars Rebels. The series, set in 4 BBY, portrays Rex still in possession of several pieces of his armor, including his distinctive helmet. This contradicts the novel's implication that the trooper was buried in the entirety of Rex's armor.
The seventh and final season of the animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars was released in 2020, featuring the Siege of Mandalore and Tano and Rex's escape from Order 66. However, the show's concluding episodes, "Shattered" and "Victory and Death", present a narrative that contradicts the events described in Ahsoka, notably omitting the buried trooper. These episodes depict Tano and Rex departing Mandalore aboard the Venator-class Star Destroyer Tribunal with Maul as their prisoner, heading towards Coruscant. Order 66 is issued while they are in hyperspace, and during the resulting skirmish, the Tribunal crashes onto a moon after Maul sabotages its hyperdrive. Tano and Rex bury the dead at the crash site, but they do not create a false grave for Rex or mark any graves with headstones.