by David Black
During their progress into the forest, the work party had passed several wide pools of standing water which echoed to the croak of frogs and were alive with the buzzing of insects. The track wound around them and the engineer in charge, with time always against him urged his men to ignore the dark ponds and press on regardless.
The drizzle which had fallen for the last hour became steadily heavier. Like the men in the marching column, the engineering party’s clothing was quickly becoming soaked by the penetrating dampness. Within minutes, heavy drops of rain replaced the steady drizzle. To the dismay of the men marching in column, rain quickly began falling in great sheets from an angry and rapidly darkening sky. Deep rolling thunder rumbled somewhere far in the distance.
To the chief engineer’s consternation, wide puddles were beginning to form in the deluge all along the track, both in front and behind his men. The thick layer of soft humus which carpeted the forest floor was soaking rapidly with the pouring rain and was in danger he realised, of turning to mud.
The path ahead for the engineering party was still quite passable, but only the worst could be assumed when more than fifteen thousand pairs of hobnailed sandals were marching across it. Sharp noises above his party made the engineering centurion glance upwards. His apprehension grew as the wind began to make the canopy sway and creak overhead. Every passing moment saw the weather getting worse.
After three hours of heavy and unceasing rain, the engineer’s worries had become fully justified. Heavily laden under individual burdens of 60lbs of equipment, the men in the winding 12 mile marching column had quickly becoming exhausted under their heavy loads. Vital energy reserves were being sapped with the extra effort of maintaining their precarious balance on a track which was rapidly dissolving into a river of thick and clinging mud.
As their centurions barked to keep up, more and more men of the 17th’s second cohort were slowly dropping back. It wasn’t laziness, simply the difficulty of maintaining the pace set by their comrades in the first cohort, most of who were marching comfortably on the virgin surface of the saturated but still spongy forest floor.
Despite the centurion’s best efforts, a gap was beginning to appear between the two cohorts, and the same situation was mirrored all along the column as conditions continued to deteriorate.
Concealed along the edges of the path, bands of barbarian warriors huddled under coarse woollen cloaks, finding shelter from the rain where they could. Arminius had issued strict orders that they were to remain concealed until he gave the signal to begin the first attacks. Hardened by their life in the forests, the men sat quietly and remained hidden. The weather was little more than an irritation to them. This was after all, their home.
Like every man in the column, Centurion Rufus was unaware that every sliding step made by his men was being watched. He yelled at one of his men who had stopped suddenly in the rain.
‘Come on man, get a grip. You must keep up.’
Already exhausted after just three hours of marching, the legionary pulled at his leg as he glared back through the torrent of rain towards his scowling officer.
‘Sorry sir, but I’m stuck. My foot just sank into a bloody hole.’
The weight of the pole across his shoulder was bending him forward onto the leg which remained firmly wedged in the rabbit hole. Furious with the weather, the army and in particular the filthy stinking mud, the legionary snapped. He flung his heavy yoke aside and dropped his sopping shield into the sludge with a string of sulphurous curses. The men struggling past laughed weakly at his temper and distress. Still cursing, the legionary threw himself backwards. With a gurgling plop the mud released him from its glutinous grip and he fell backwards with a sudden and surprised cry.
Rufus had reached the man and tried not to join in the laughter. He wasn’t blind; he knew his men needed rest, but the orders were to keep going. Still scowling he roared.
‘Laying down for a sleep are you?’
There were sniggers all around them.
‘Get up you lazy sod before I stop seeing the funny side of this!’
Red-faced, the legionary’s back was plastered from head to toe in clinging mud. With great difficulty he picked himself up. Wearily wiping his hands on his soaking tunic he picked up his shield and hefted the yoke back across his shoulder.
‘That’s better laddie.’ Snapped Rufus, eyeing him coldly. ‘Now get back into line with your mates, and stop dicking around playing in the mud, or you’ll be on a charge!’
It was a similar story all along the column. Units were becoming mixed up despite gallopers who occasionally brought orders for individual units to catch up. Several centuries at the back of the 19th Legion had even been overtaken by the lighter elements of the baggage train.
Now ahead by several miles, ranging far in front of the disorganised column the engineering unit had come to a full stop. The track which had started so wide and promising had gradually narrowed. Now it was squeezed between sopping craggy outcrops of rock rising thirty feet above them on one side, and dense and seemingly impenetrable forest on the other. The scouts had urged the engineering centurion on, reassuring and promising him that this was just one bad area and the track cleared again just a short distance ahead.
The weary centurion removed the dripping helmet from his head and wiped the rain from his face. He had been forced to call a halt before a tangled lattice of moss covered fallen trees; their decaying trunks wedged together between outcrops of rock, which without back-breaking work would permanently block any chance of further progress. Exasperated he called to the men behind him.
‘Right lads. Bring up axes and crowbars. I want this obstruction cleared as quickly as possible.’
His men stumbled forward. To their dismay, the obstruction was interlaced with a confused jumble of vicious thorn covered vines.
As his men’s axes began thudding into the sopping trunks the engineer sighed to himself. He’d been in plenty of difficult terrain during his long career, but despite his best efforts he couldn’t remember anything quite as bad as this.
The legionaries grunted with effort as they swung their heavy axes down into the logs. Woodchips flew everywhere as sweat mixed with rain trickled into their eyes and down their faces. When rewarded with a final snap, other legionaries stepped forward and levering them free, dragged each heavy log aside before rolling it well clear of the path. The task proved to be exhausting and time-consuming labour, but on the constricted path it was the only possible way to keep moving forward.
With growing irritation at the slow progress their officer watched as the last trunk was rolled free. Satisfied that the path was now clear he signalled his men forward. Absently wondering what lay ahead, he cast about looking for the two guides who had failed to warn him of this latest and unexpected obstacle. Through the continuing deluge and thunder which rumbled and echoed across the heavens, he looked everywhere but couldn’t see either of them. Angrily he snapped.
‘Has anyone seen those bloody auxiliaries?’
His men paused for a moment. Heads turned then shook. Engrossed in clearing the path, not one of the sweating men had noticed the pair slipping silently into the depths of the surrounding forest only minutes earlier...
Arminius smiled with grim satisfaction from his hidden vantage point, as he watched the struggling efforts of the tail of the rapidly disintegrating column. He had already counted the passing of all three Eagles, and the men who were doing their best to follow them. Their ranks look ragged. The usually smart close marching centuries and cohorts were clearly in trouble. Instead of being closed up and one long regulation line of six men abreast, Varus’s army was breaking into groups of tired and dejected looking men. Sometimes, there were several minutes of silence below on the carpet of mud before the next dishevelled unit passed by.
The end of the baggage train was close to him now.
Whips cracked and drovers shouted, urging on their struggling beasts. The wagon wheels bit deeply into the churned
mud, disturbing buried roots and adding to the drovers’ problems of trying to catch up with the Legions. There were soldiers among them, but many looked tired and vacant. Some were limping as they struggled on through the clinging mud. The confused mix of different shield emblems suggested they were simply stragglers from different Legions; injured men that were unable to keep up, who had slowly dropped further and further back from their own tired units, which grimly struggling on somewhere ahead.
Arminius had chosen his vantage point with great care. He was two miles inside the forest. Now that the last of the slow moving baggage train was passing by, only the civilians who had worked at the Legions’ summer camp were still to come. They held no interest for him. Lost and afraid, they could easily be rounded up when the fighting was over and added to the tribesmen’s haul of booty. Their fate was sealed, some would be taken as slaves, others ransomed for gold.
He stared up for a moment at the dark skies. Sudden lightning flashed across it. The foul weather was totally unexpected, but he silently welcomed the God’s bonus of such generous bounty. Arminius turned and walked silently between the densely packed trees to the other side of the hill.
Untying his horse, Arminius climbed into the saddle. He ordered a messenger to run back along an old hidden hunters’ path which ran almost parallel to the Roman’s route. The messenger was to signal the hidden men guarding the end of the track where the Romans had entered the Teutoburg to seal it off, then advance and begin harrying the tail, creating fear and forcing it ever deeper into the forest. Arminius wanted no survivors escaping back along the way they had come.
Carrying his wooden spear parallel with the ground, the messenger eagerly loped off to pass the order as Arminius turned his horse and kicked its flanks. The Romans had blundered deep inside the trap, and now he thought as he galloped along the track, it was time to spring it
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Chapter 26
Having ridden less than a mile, Arminius reached the first group of waiting tribesmen. Surrounded by a huddle of his men, their leader stood up. Shaking drops of the rain from his cloak, he walked forward as Arminius rode into their midst.
‘It is time.’ Arminius called gravely. The Bructeri leader nodded and turned. Drawing his sword in silence he motioned to his warriors to follow him. Breaking into a run they headed off into the trees towards the unsuspecting column.
* * * * *
‘Come on, keep moving you lazy bastards!’
The centurion commanding one of the 19th’s centuries was worried. He hadn’t seen sight or sound of the units in front or behind him for nearly an hour. Despite shouting himself horse bellowing threats and even using blows from his vine cane, his men were flagging badly. Even so the centurion knew his duty. Despite the constant rain and sucking mud he had to keep them moving until they reached their rest at the day’s marching camp. Somewhere far ahead, he judged the front of the column would be close to stopping now. It was comforting to know that they would follow standard procedure and begin laying out the Legion’s overnight base. As more and more centuries and cohorts reached the day’s stop point, they would slip off their packs and begin building the defensive stockade, while others dug the surrounding ditch which would keep them all protected for the night to come.
Although there was still difficult marching ahead, his men would need every minute of sleep they could get tonight, after marching for hours in such awful conditions. What a difference it had been when they marched off that morning he thought. His men’s spirits had soared. There had been plenty of smiles and even occasional laughter in the ranks, but not now, not anymore. His entire century looked exhausted. All around him, his men dragged themselves on through the mud like part of a defeated and retreating army. What else could he do he wondered, that he hadn’t tried already to lift their morale and keep them going? He wiped the rain from his face and looked up at the dark sky. If only, he thought angrily, the damned weather would ease up for a while.
As his men trudged on in silence, one of them suddenly looked up. Blessed with exceptionally sharp hearing, he had picked up a strange sound which didn’t belong. It was odd, like a muffled rumble. Not like the thunder overhead, more like the continuous rumble of hundreds of distant cartwheels rolling down a hill. Stranger still, it wasn’t coming from above, but from higher up the slope on one side of the dripping forest.
The legionary looked up and said to the man closest to him.
‘Do you hear that?’
His companion growled. Head down, he was too tired for stupid conversation.
‘What?’
‘That noise...listen.’
With a loud tut, the second legionary raised his head.
‘What noise...I can’t hear anything....’
That was the moment the first barbarians burst from the covering trees. It wasn’t thunder the legionary had heard, but the drumming of hundreds of feet running down the forest slope beside them.
Eyes wide with surprise and horror, the sharp eared legionary bellowed a frantic warning.
‘Attack...We’re under attack!’
But it was too late. Sprinting through the trees the first warriors crashed into the thin line of struggling legionaries. Hacking and slashing at them, the Bructeri allowed no time for the century to deploy, or even defend themselves against their speed and sudden ferocity.
The track was immediately filled with blood and the screams of dying men. A few of the legionaries managed to draw their swords and fend off the rain of blows from the nearest tribesmen, but there were just too many flashing blades around them. As one frightened legionary fought desperately with sword and shield, he was stabbed in the back with a Bructeri spear. With a grunt the man pitched forward, face down in the sucking mud.
Further up the track, the centurion frantically bellowed for his remaining men still on their feet to rally to the century’s standard, which had been thrust behind him into the mud. He tried to defend it but was quickly overwhelmed and brutally slain by a dozen wild-eyed warriors who stabbed him repeatedly with their fire hardened spears. Seeing their officer fall, the last remnants of the century despairingly tried to run for it, but even without their packs they were still weighed down with sopping armour which wasn’t designed for sprinting. The fleetest of them only managed to make a few yards beyond the edge of the track before the surviving legionaries were surrounded by howling warriors and brutally slaughtered to a man.
In the sudden silence that followed, chest heaving with his violent exertions the Bructeri’s leader snatched at the abandoned standard. Lifting it high into the air with one hand, he raised his blood-stained sword in the other and let out a deafening cry of victory, which was echoed by the roaring warriors around him.
Beyond sight and sound of the century’s slaughter, further along the line, other centuries and cohorts came under different attacks. Stones and lead slingshot peppered ragged ranks and clanged off shields and armour as the legionaries desperately tried to defend themselves from the deadly missiles. Totally unexpected, the first volley had taken many in one century of the 19th. The barbarian’s whirring slings were usually used for hunting. In skilled hands most tribesmen could hit a roosting bird or small deer at fifty paces. Slow moving men were bigger targets, and much easier to hit.
Their centurion had been the first to die with a stone between his eyes. His Optio saw him suddenly judder and fall. The young Optio frantically tried to reorganise his men. To his horror he quickly realised the slingers were firing from both sides of the track.
‘Pair up lads and watch each other’s flanks.’
The men had stalled. He had to get them away from the killing ground where they were trapped, but there was a problem...
‘The wounded! Protect the wounded, we can’t leave them behind.’
There were men lying half submerged in the mud, a hotchpotch of bodies scattered all around him. Many were dead but some of them were howling with pain. They clutched at bleeding wounds where the solid shot had br
oken a bone or penetrated unprotected flesh after it had hissed invisible and deadly from the trees.
‘Come on boys. Pair up and grab a wounded man!’
Beginning to recover from their shock, his men responded. It was a drill they had practised many times, but for most, this was the first time they had done it under real enemy fire.
One switched his shield to the other arm and crouching down to make themselves the smallest possible target, keeping close together they sheltered behind their wooden shields and sloshed through the mud to the nearest wounded man. Planting their shields either side of him, they used their free arms to drag him to his feet. Tightening their grip on the lifesaving shields they pulled their howling comrade further up the track, and hopefully out of the line of fire.
There were too many slingers scattered among the trees still launching their deadly projectiles to mount a counterattack so the Optio roared out an order he hoped would save them all.
‘Century will withdraw...Come on boys! Follow me up the track... at the double!’
All along the straggling line attacks were being made on isolated Roman units. Those annihilated were silent. Those still under attack couldn’t pass warnings forward or back. Noise of individual battles was deadened by the distances opened up between separated units, the storm overhead and the trees which surrounded them. Many, like Rufus’s century just trudged on; totally unaware they were marching into the middle of a war.
For once, Rufus had thrown regulation to the wind. Normally, he followed the book to the letter but the horrendous conditions meant casting it aside temporarily and instead, thinking for himself. He had decided to ignore regulations and ordered frequent short stops to allow stragglers to catch up. He had lost contact hours earlier with the rest of the cohort and decided that his priority was now to keep his men together. At peace or not, his was a fighting unit, and it couldn’t and wouldn’t function strung out and exhausted. The lack of contact in both directions, and the dreadful state of the track made him suspicious that the rest of the Legion was faring little better than his own men; they must, he reasoned be just as hampered by the storm.
