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'Quintictilius Varus, Give Me Back My Legions!' Augustus Caesar Roman Emperor AD 9 Each Legionary Placed His Boot Carefully

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'Quintictilius Varus, Give Me Back My Legions!' Augustus Caesar Roman Emperor AD 9 Each Legionary Placed His Boot Carefully ‘Quintictilius Varus, give me back my legions!’ Augustus Caesar Roman Emperor AD 9 Each legionary placed his boot carefully, stepping between twisted roots and rocks to avoid slipping on the moss and sludge. Everything was wet and the ground underfoot sank under the men's weight. Above huge boulders and gnarled ancient trees hung like roof trusses and rock walls ran with rivulets streaming with ice water. The column marched doggedly through the frozen wastes of the Teutoburg Forest. Icy crystals hung from the low branches of the majestic pine trees and conifers. The men couldn't avoid their embrace and had long been drenched, as if the heavens above had burst. The damp forest floor was covered with a thick carpet of pine needles and rotting bark. The men cursed to their comrades, and to themselves, as soldiers do, and shivered beneath their sagums. The red woollen military cloaks were wet and heavy. The forest frost robbed each legionary of body heat, despite the unremitting hours of physical effort to keep up with the man ahead. Each man was bare legged, and the skin on their calves and knees was scratched and torn by the sharp rocks and fallen branches, and the lichen caused them to slip and slide so that every step became three. They wore heavy leather sandals with a hobnailed sole; good footwear in open grassy plains but here in the forest the mud squelched between their toes so their feet slipped and chafed as they walked. Legionary Marcus Catullus no longer bothered to speak. Weariness and resignation weighed heavily upon him, and so he trudged on doggedly, placing each step carefully, just fixing his gaze on the man ahead. His thoughts were of Attilia and the little ones. By Jupiter he missed them. He dwelt on the memories of her smell, her long brown hair and slim neck. He thought of Attilia's brown supple shoulders, her apple shaped backside and long willowy legs, her laugh and honey coloured eyes. She'd waved at him as he marched off to the barracks with Gaius all those months before. Little Paulus was on her hip sucking his thumb and Sarina held her mother's hand and waved once at Marcus just as he finally disappeared down the Roman road. By Jupiter Best and Greatest if I could just hold her once more. ‘Do you think General Publius Quinctilius Varus is half as cocky by now Marcus?' Marcus wished that Gaius would just shut his trap and let them march in peace but he knew Gaius from a hundred camps and campaigns. If Gaius needs words now then he could spare them. Soon it may be him in need of speech. Marcus looked back at Gaius. Even this was an effort. His head was bare and the water streamed down his matted dark locks, cut short in the Roman way. His face and chin was streaked with mud, scratched and bleeding from the branches and covered with a five day beard. As with the others his bronze helmet was slung over his right shoulder by its chin strap. ‘Who can say? The legion has some able centurions Gaius, Proculus may have his faults but he won't hold back on giving Varus advice. Entering this dung heap of a forest isn't the legion way. Maybe Varus will realise that by now if he deigns to peer out the velvet curtains of his wagon.' ‘No wagon in this place would get far Marcus, unless Varus's slaves build him a road as he goes. No; he'll be on that white horse of his by now to keep his toes dry.’ Gaius stopped, reshouldered his scutum shield and pack, then followed Marcus up a steep rise. ‘By Jupiter, the column of march must go on for leagues. All the centuries are all asunder by now.' Legionary Decimus Drusus, immediately in front of Marcus, reached the top of yet another slippery embankment ahead. He rested his heavy javelin pilum on the ground as a crutch and looked back. His red and gold scutum shield was slung on his left shoulder in the legion way. He turned and looked at Marcus and Gaius still heaving themselves up the embankment. They grabbed whatever hand holds they could and tried to find purchase with their sandals. ‘This smells like a ten day corpse,' said Decimus. ‘If the Celt bastards attack us, we can't form close order. It'd be every man for himself. We're like a centipede cut into pieces. One section can't help another.' Marcus nodded. He knew the army of Rome as an extraordinary beast. Each part a superbly disciplined limb which carries the rest towards whatever the gods decree. Each looks the same, moves the same and behaves just like its brothers. But if the limb is severed from the main beast....well that is what the Celt's strategy had always been, to sever the limbs. ‘Varus must know the risk,' said Marcus. ‘A calculated risk gains victory. Ten years I've served this Legion. Fifteen years more, I get the Bronze Diploma and the pension. Just do as we're told Decimus, as always things will get better. We'll probably be in open fields again come nightfall and safe in camp. They're probably lighting the cooking fires right now. No Celt will touch us then.' The mule bayed. Gaius turned quickly to the Legionary behind him. ‘Shut Augustus's trap Domituis, she'll bring the top knots down on us.' ‘Then we'll get some scalps at last. They're like shades from Elysian Fields these Celts. Let's go shield to shield with them and they'll learn to fear the seventeenth.’ Domituis was a grizzelled twenty five year veteran who'd served from Spain to Syria. No one doubted his will to fight, or his courage, he'd proven both often enough. Soon he was to retire and would return to his village in Gaul. Like many legionaries his people were not from Italy but from conquered territories long brought to yield under the Roman yoke. It was way of things now; citizenship marked a man's status, not your people, or your tribe. Domituis stroked the mule's snout and whispered comforting sounds in her ear. Augustus shook herself, as vapours blew from her nostrils in the freezing air. The contubernium's baggage was loaded on the animal. Each legionary's welfare depended on Augustus the mule, for the eight man squad shared everything. Their common tent made of cow hide, the food rations and water, trenching tools, dolabras shovels and picks, and spare weapons were all loaded on Augustus's back. Everything else was carried by the soldiers themselves. All their personal belongings and food for the march were in a pack at the end of a pole slung over each man's shoulder. And so the men of the Second Contubernium, of the Third Century, of the Second Cohort, of the Seventeenth Augustan Legion, trudged through the primeval forest, picking the best terrain, and trying to keep in contact with the column ahead. The daylight faded, the giant pines and conifers grew in girth and the legionaries were forced to enter a narrow ravine overshadowed by moss covered boulders and dead fallen trunks. Everything was coated with a soft light green carpet of lichen. The whole world had become green, interspersed with dark forbidden timber. This campaign had dragged on relentlessly, month after month. The Celtic tribes, in their Germanic way, refused to lay down their arms and pledge allegiance to Rome's might. Then they refused to stand and fight, simply melting away before the legions like ethereal mists of the forests. The three Augustan legions under the command of Publius Quinctilius Varus were determined to engage them in battle. The seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth legions, the cream of Emperor Augustus's army, would bring the barbarians to heel. Twenty thousand men and auxillary troops, fully trained and equipped would finally quell the troublesome Germanic tribes. They had help. Allies protected the legions flanks under the Germanic leader named Arminus. He was civilised, and a citizen of Rome having pledged friendship and fidelity to the Emperor. The legions had pressed on stubbornly, maintaining contact with enemy stragglers, tantalisingly within reach of forward scouts and skirmishers. But just as it seemed the main body were trapped and must give battle, they had entered the forest, the Teutoburg Forest. They had left the tundra and broad grassy plains and followed the Germans into the trees. At first the scrub was sparse and the cohorts could keep order easily in well drilled ranks. But soon the seventeenth legion was broken into individual cohorts, and then the centuries also became separated by the rough terrain. Each century had eight contubernia or eight men sections, and by nightfall these also were alone in the vast silent forest. Sight and sound was absorbed into a vast morass of damp, dead vegetation covering every feature, every rock, and every fallen tree. The sun and moon seemed always obscured by massive overhanging conifers. And so the Romans marched on, with only their ‘tentful' comrades, their contubernia, to aid and give them sustenance. The Roman legionary, the foot sloggers who had conquered the known world had never felt so lonely. The shadows lengthened and the unseen sun fell below the surrounding mountains that bordered the Teutoburg Forest. The legionaries of the second contubernium bivouacked as they had a thousand times before. But this night there was no time for the usual field camp, and no ditch faced with turf, levelled off to a rampart.
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