19

The six hundred recruits wore cloaks as protection against the elements. Those who had belongings had them strapped in a bundle carried on their shoulders. It was a dark night, with dampness in the air that signalled rain was on the way. The newly arrived trainees, anxious to get into the warmth of the barracks that surrounded the parade ground, envied the legionaries who had been their escorts and who had been dismissed to its warmth and a hot meal.

The ragged lines of volunteers shivered in the icy rain that had started to fall. The vast recruit training camp, located in the country north of Rome, was ideally suited to its purpose. Here the would-be legionaries would eventually take part in field exercises that simulated combat in every kind of terrain and in conditions and circumstances dictated by their tutors.

Gaius Iovis the duty centurion, immaculately turned out, was flanked by a dozen NCOs and the optio, the junior officer responsible for the administrative tasks associated with the men under the centurion’s command; punishment records, administering the men’s pay, savings, equipment, sentry rotas, organising weapons inspections, feed for the section’s mules, ration collection and barrack inspections - all of which had to be carried out and recorded accurately, much of it on a daily basis. This required the optio to be literate, good with numbers, have organisational skills and a firm grasp of logistics. He performed these duties as an addition to being a soldier, and was not excused any of the day-to-day duties of a legionary. The rank and his performance were pre-requisites to promotion to centurion.

Gaius Iovis was as indifferent to the weather as he was to his new charges’ discomfort. “The men who brought you here” he bellowed “are soldiers of Rome; the best in the world. You signed up to join them and my job is to make sure you are fit to do so. Those of you who work hard in the next six months will leave here as legionaries. Those that fail – if they survive - could end up in the Empire’s mines or chained to a galley oar.” With that ominous promise the shivering men were finally dismissed to barracks.

The drill instructors arrived before dawn, canes swinging, iron shod sandals booting the startled bleary eyed recruits out of their warm cots. They were herded into the dark street and driven like cattle to the stores, where they were stripped of their civilian identities.

Stark naked, the shivering men lined up at the long counters, where the quarter master’s assistants handed out their new clothes and equipment - tunics, jerkins, woollen breeches, heavy cloaks, mess tin and, most importantly, a pair of heavy sandals soled with iron studs. As no attention had been given to sizing, men hurriedly swapped various garments they had been issued with. Eventually standard issue tunics were dragged over standard issue rough wool breeches. Sandals were laced and heavy leather jerkins pulled over heads and buckled fast at the sides.

Centurian Gaius arrived with a blast of cold air from the door he kicked open and a roar that silenced the room. “OUTSIDE - NOW!”

With the drill instructors mercilessly hammering them with their canes, the hapless recruits staggered into the cold dawn, to be driven onto the parade ground where they spent a long and painful day learning the basics - to move and to stop on command, to march in step and to turn left, right and about. They had to stand to attention and to memorise their position in the rank allotted to them. They ended their first day marching to the armourer’s stores, to receive a mail shirt, a helmet and a dagger. Barely having time to try out their new possessions, the armourer’s assistants issued training javelins, large rectangular shields made of cane and wooden swords weighted with lead. These weapons were greeted with incredulity by the new recruits. They were the object of much ribald comment until Gaius put in an appearance.

The weeks that followed were filled with endless drilling. The dawn trumpet called the recruits to assembly dressed and equipped for inspection, followed by a breakfast of barley porridge and watered wine. Then back to the parade ground to learn the complicated parade drills.

Gaius and his teams of drill instructors stalked their ranks. Every mistake was punished with a savage blow from the thick canes they carried and a volley of curses. Painfully they learned to stop and turn, to wheel and to march in step with perfect precision. Then they learned the battlefield drills, unique to Rome’s legions; their complex formation changes, open order to close, line to square and back to line. They learned how to form the tortoise formation and the wedge. Without breaking step they learned the difficult but vital manoeuvre performed within the square, whereby men in the middle and the back move forward and the men at the front move back out of the front line, thus presenting the enemy with a rested adversary. In a battle that could rage all day, this manoeuvre was of incalculable value to the Romans.

During a close engagement, visibility could become a problem as they and the opposing armies stirred up great clouds of dust. Noise was another element which, combined with poor visibility, caused confusion, making communication difficult. Commanders used standards as rallying points, but moving their forces tactically as a battle developed was difficult. Using voice commands was ineffectual. To overcome this, the Romans had designed a trumpet, the cornicon, with a particularly penetrating note. They also developed signals to manoeuvre their forces across the battlefield. So important were these trumpeters that they never entered the thick of battle, staying close to the overall commander and protected by his bodyguard, ready to sound out his orders which would ring across the battlefield.

Instantly recognising these signals was so important, that Gaius simulated the noise and dust of battle by turning out the cavalry to mill around his trainees, churning up dust. The noise was supplied by a military band!

The recruits, blinded by dust, bumped and barged by the cavalry’s horses and deafened by the enthusiastic band, were forced repeatedly to respond to the blare of the cornicons and carry out a series of complicated battlefield manoeuvres.

From a wooden tower Gaius appraised their performance. Nothing less than perfect was acceptable. “They are” he observed drily to one of his aids “only playing - nobody has any weapons!” Importantly, burdened with the weight of their equipment, they had built up the muscle and the endurance to do this for hours on end. This was just as well for, six weeks into their basic training Gaius started to lead them out of the camp four times a week on punishing route marches which started after three long hours on morning parade. At the day’s end they trudged back to base in the dark. Disgruntled and bone weary, they would wait to be dismissed by the old man who had been with them all day. Even the toughest among them grudgingly acknowledged Centurion Gaius’ fitness and wondered if they would ever match it.

It was at about this time that Gaius and his drill instructors started to talk to the recruits. At first the men found this somewhat unnerving, having been subjected almost exclusively to curses and invective screamed at them for the last two months. They had also become accustomed to being struck hard, without warning, for the slightest failure or slowness to respond instantly to an order. Anybody foolish enough to indicate, by lifting so much as an eyebrow, that any of this was unwarranted, could double around the parade ground ten times carrying a fifty pound log above his head, or spend a week filling in full latrines and digging new ones. Offences warranting more serious punishment escalated rapidly - stoppage of pay, double guard duty, flogging, and as a last resort, execution.

During brief rest periods Gaius and his drill instructors began to educate their charges, explaining how the Roman army functioned; getting the men to understand why it was so successful; what their part in it would be and, very importantly, other than their pay what they could expect to get out of it. Which was a pension after twenty five years’ service, free land and slaves to work it if they were prepared to colonise the most recent of Rome’s conquests. Plus, if you were not a Roman citizen, you were granted citizenship.

At this point in their training, the recruits were introduced to camp construction, which took place outside the walls of the fortress. Under the ever present drill instructors and Gaius’ watchful eye, their first task was to observe. A circular arena had been marked out with coloured pegs. Outside the marked arena a cohort of regular troops from the barracks was standing easy. With them were several wagons, their contents sheeted over. The mules that hauled them had been hobbled and turned loose to browse.

“From now on at the end of the day you build a camp, which is a defensive position. As we are in not hostile territory, this requires a considerably less complicated structure – which means less work!” What had really registered with the troops was not the amount of work necessary to achieve the task that lay ahead of them. It was what they would be required to do it at the end of every day, including those days they had forced marched thirty miles!

While Gaius had been addressing the recruits, the regular troops had unloaded a quantity of picks and shovels. After each man had been issued one of each, they were ordered to take up a position within the outer circle marked by white pegs. Gaius ordered them to start digging. Each man was allocated a section of circle six feet in length and six feet wide, which he was required to excavate to a depth of four feet. “The spoil of which”, Gaius growled, “is to be piled up on the inner side of the ditch and stamped down”. Even though they were toughened by months of exercising, marching, and weapons training, the recruits found the digging hard going.

After two hours hard graft, the trench was completed to the centurion’s satisfaction and a thirty minute break called. During the time they had been digging the regular troops had unloaded the supply wagons. The result was a vast quantity of stores stacked in piles, each marked with a different coloured pennant.

“Right, on your feet, listen and learn - or you can fill that bloody trench in and dig another”. Gaius’ words brought the weary recruits to their feet with alacrity. “You now have to construct the camp – your camp – which may well be the thing that ensures your survival.

“You will be split up into teams. Each team will be assisted by three regular troops. You will obey them in all things or answer to me. Teams will be allotted different tasks. These will take place in an ordered sequence. First, the commander’s tent will be set up in the centre of the camp on the spot marked. All of the commander’s equipment will be placed inside it. Second, all the animals and wagons and stores will also be placed in the centre. Latrines will be dug, a cookhouse established and the hospital wagon made ready.

“Next, the officers’ tents will be placed in an inner ring around the centre. Fourthly, streets have been marked out radiating from the hub of the commander’s tent. Along these streets you pitch your tents in the allocated spaces. Outside each tent you will set up a tripod and every man will place his weapons on it ready to hand. Fifthly, every man will know exactly where he is to go if an alarm is sounded.

“Finally, the optio will establish a sentry roster and set the password for the day. Sentries will be posted immediately. When the camp has been established to my satisfaction, and only then, will work cease and you will be free to take your ease”.

This last brought an ironical cheer from the recruits, who were beginning to have a grudging respect for the man who could march them into the ground, outfight any two of them and never show any sign of fatigue. Meanwhile, an NCO was preparing another phase of their training, the building and working of artillery, plus the setting up and use of ladders and towers to scale obstacles and rams to batter down walls. More sophisticated machines and methods were the province of the legion’s engineering core and the legion’s architects who designed war machines.

All of this weaponry was capable of construction at field level and was prefabricated for easy transportation. Gaius’ men would eventually become expert in the use of a wide variety of these weapons. There were machines called tormenta that catapulted a variety of materials at defenders on the walls. Incendiaries and rocks could be hurled in large quantities with devastating effect. Used in conjunction with the tormenta were the ballistae, powered by two horizontal arms which were stressed with tightly wound ropes of horse hair. The arms were drawn to the rear with a lever to provide the torsion power to hurl a large stone with tremendous force. Often the ballistae was hauled up into a tower and protected by snipers armed with slings or bows.

Similar to the ballistae was the onogar. Because of its size the onogar, which had a frame of solid timber, was used at ground level. A type of catapult, it hurled huge stones, often covered with pitch and set alight before being flung over the walls to destroy buildings.

A weapon used very effectively against defenders manning city walls was the Scorpio, a crossbow like device that fired heavy, metre long arrows with great accuracy and tremendous force.

While the defenders were under attack, battering rams were brought up to hammer the walls. Each was a huge beam, similar in size to the main mast of a large ship. One end of it was capped with iron shaped like a ram’s head. This was suspended from a second beam with cables around its middle, which in turn was supported at both ends by posts fixed into the ground. Drawn back by a team of men, it was then swung with all their power, so that its head hit the wall. This was done repeatedly, day and night, with teams of men ensuring its force never waned. When operating the ram, the whole structure and its operators were encased in a mobile shelter called a tortoise – the testudo - from which the ram would swing out of the shelter, similar to a tortoise’s head appearing from its shell. The frame of the testudo was covered with uncured hides which rendered it fireproof.

Roman infantry, who were to assault the walls as well as having ladders, used siege towers. These came in a variety of sizes and designs, often with different devices attached to them such as artillery, drawbridges and rams. Towers were between fifty and seventy five feet high and often sheeted with metal plate to protect them from fire. Occasionally they would be fitted with leather hosepipes into which water could be pumped.

Walls could also be attacked by mining. Sometimes tunnels would be dug in secret under the walls as a means of entering the city. Alternatively, caves would be dug under the walls’ foundations and underpinned with wood. Inflammable materials were then packed in and fired; all of which was designed to cause their collapse.

Building and maintaining this array of weapons, was an army of auxiliary specialists who were attached to every legion. Highly skilled engineers, they would go ahead of the advancing army, building a road on which the legions advanced.

Late into the night Gaius sat with the optio, drawing up the recruits’ training schedules that would cover every aspect of the transportation, assembly and use of this devastatingly effective weaponry.

What the Centurion Gaius didn’t know was that he and the optio, along with his recruits, would soon see active service in Judaea - to fight a war that would last seven bloody years and change the course of history.