The Helvetian Affair Read online

  “Veterani?” Bantus corrected him. “No, you’ll be a miles. You won’t be considered a veteranus until you’re blooded in battle.”

  “What do you mean by a ‘cohors ordinis secundi’?” I asked.

  “A cohors of the second rank,” Bantus started, then called over, “Hey, Tulli! Will you show Pustula over there how to rub the sand in before he carves a hole in that helmet?”

  Then Bantus addressed my question. “The legion lines up for battle in three ordines, ranks. Cohorts one, two, three, and four are in the front; five, six, and seven in the middle; and eight, nine, and ten in the rear.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked.

  “Since the first rank makes contact with the enemy,” Bantus explained, “that’s where you want your best soldiers . . . the big guys . . . guys who don’t break. . . . In fact, the First Cohort is always on the legion’s right flank. . . . When the legion advances, their job is to turn the enemy’s flank . . . So the First Cohort guys are always your biggest and your fastest . . . the best guys to have in a scrum. . . . In most legions, the First Cohort gets extra pay and is immune from most details. At the end of a day’s march, while you muli are humping to dig a marching camp, they’re out in front providing security.”

  “So, that’s where we want to be,” Rufus interrupted. “More money, less work!”

  Bantus snorted, “You’re goin’ to have to grow a bit before you get a chance at that, Red! But, remember, those guys earn their money! You can spend your entire military career in the third rank and never see a living enemy soldier, never get a scratch on you, but those guys in the front rank always make contact. If you’re in the First Cohort, you better be good, or you’re perfututus, completely screwed!”

  Bantus grabbed my helmet and inspected it. “That’s a good job, Pagane,” he said. “Now, once you get all the tarnish off, buff it with one of the softer cloths. In fact, fog it with your breath, then polish it up, like this.” Bantus demonstrated what he was talking about.

  “M’audite, infantes!” he addressed the group of us. “Once you get these pots polished up, don’t touch them with your fingers. It’ll smudge the shine, and Strabo will write you up for it! Always keep a cleaning cloth with you for inspection. You can stuff it under your helmet on top of your pilleum. The damn pot’ll fit your head better that way.”

  “That reminds me,” Tulli butted in. “You guys owe me a minerva each for those caps.”

  Suddenly, one of our squad, a guy who had not said much to any of us all the way up from Mediolanum, so of course we called him Loquax, “Gabby,” asked, “What about the officers, Bantus? Don’t we have to watch out for them?”

  “Officers?” Bantus snorted. “Cacat! You’re tirones . . . and everybody knows it because of those white, vestal-virgin dresses you’re wearing. . . . Everybody in this camp outranks you . . . even the shaggin’ cockroaches . . . But you got a point, Loquax . . . Until you guys have your shit together, you want to avoid the centurions.”

  “Centurions?” a tiro we called Felix, “Lucky,” piped up from the rear of the tent. “There was this guy who had a small farm a couple miles from my village . . . Used to come into my dad’s caupona and get himself drunk a couple of times a month . . . Said he was a retired centurion . . . a real hard case.”

  “Durus,” Tulli nodded, while trying to adjust the straps on Minutus’ helmet so it would fit on his melon-sized head. “That’s as good a description for a centurion as you can get . . . hard as a boot nail on a forced march . . . and just as sharp.”

  “Centurions command the centuries,” Bantus nodded. “That means there’s sixty in the legion, plus the praefectus castrorum, the camp prefect—that hard case we met this morning. My advice to you tirones is to stay out of their way. Compared to one of those guys, Strabo’s a pussycat.”

  “How can we recognize them to avoid them?” I asked Bantus.

  “They carry a vitis, a cudgel made of vine wood,” Bantus told me. “If a centurion doesn’t like what you’re doing . . . or if he just doesn’t like your face . . . he’ll let you have it . . . across your back . . . on your shoulder . . . across the back of your legs . . . or right down on your head. . . . You spot a soldier carrying a vitis, you better decide you have business in the other direction. . . . There’s nothing to be gained by getting involved with a centurion.”

  Bantus seemed to be talking from experience.

  Strabo suddenly burst into the tent.

  “Contubernium! STATE!” yelled Bantus.

  We all jumped to our feet and assumed the position. Somewhere behind me I heard a helmet hit the ground.

  “I need three volunteers for a detail,” Strabo directed. “You . . . you . . . and you!”

  He pointed to Minutus, Felix, and me. “Helmets, belts, and boots!” he ordered. “Tulli! You take charge of these men and report to the mess tent. Move it! You . . . Pustula . . . pick up that helmet . . . The rest of you . . . I’m looking at this shaggin’ pigsty you call a tent, and I’m not liking what I see!”

  The three of us spent the rest of the day working in the legion’s mess tent, assisting the cooks, scrubbing the pots and cooking utensils, hauling water from the camp water point, serving the food, cleaning up after the meal, and then scrubbing the pots and cooking utensils all over again.

  We didn’t get back to the tent until halfway through the first watch of the night. When we arrived, we saw Loquax and Pustula standing guard at the entrance. No sooner were we three paces from the entrance when Loquax challenged us.

  “Consistite! Quis est?” he called.

  We stopped, more from surprise than obedience. Felix responded, “Cut the shit, Loquax! You know who we are!”

  There were a few heartbeats of silence before Loquax said, “Advance one to be recognized!”

  “Cacat!” Felix said and walked forward.

  When Felix was about a pace away, Loquax said loudly, “Consiste!” Then, he said softly, “Palus!”

  Felix stopped and said to him, “Palus? Swamp? What are you talkin’ about? Swamp? We’re tired! We want to get some sleep. Will you cut this shit out?”

  By this time, Tulli had come out of the tent. “Will you two keep it down?” he hissed.

  Then, he turned to Felix. “This is a guard mount, Tiro! He’s just given you the sign. If you want to pass, you have to give him the countersign.”

  “Sign? Countersign?” Felix spat. “Tulli! I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!”

  Tulli nodded. “The countersign’s ‘cygnus.’ When the guard challenges you with the sign palus, you’re supposed to respond with cygnus, swan. If you don’t, he’s supposed to put a pilum through your chest. Then, you can sleep forever, you stupid mentula!”

  Then, Tulli called out to us, “Bring it in here! You can relax, Loquax. I’ll handle this.”

  When we were around him, Tulli said, “Strabo’s established a guard mount around the tent at night. Each of you will pull one or two guard watches here each night, depending on the duty roster. In fact, you better get inside and get some sleep. Pagane, you and loudmouth here got third watch tonight. Minutus, you’re on second watch with Rufus. I’m your tesserarius, sergeant of the guard. I rouse you up and brief you when it’s your turn. But, remember, if you got to leave the tent to go to the latrine, the sign-countersign tonight is ‘palus-cygnus.’ Repeat that!”

  We did.

  “Bene!” Tulli said. “Now, get in your bunks, and get some sleep! We eat chow at first call tomorrow, and I’m sure Strabo has a busy day planned for you boys.”

  And, that was the start of many “busy” days for us. We roused up just before the horn signaling the end of the fourth watch. We were double-timed to the mess tent for some bread and watered-down posca. Then, Strabo led us on a twenty thousand pace trudge into the hills, partly marching, partly double-timing, and sometimes outright running. We were back in camp by the seventh hour where we were fed some kind of hot porridge, boiled vegetables, bread, and
more posca. After about an hour’s rest, Bantus and Tulli trained us in close-order drill, marching, and formations. Then, Strabo was back with more physical conditioning.

  One of Strabo’s favorite drills was what he called situlae, buckets. Each of us would grab two empty buckets from the mess tent. Then, we would double-time out to the water point about a thousand paces west of the camp, fill the buckets, double-time back, and empty the water into the mess-tent troughs. Sometimes, Strabo would have us carry the filled buckets at our sides until our shoulders seemed like they were on fire; then, we’d shift them in front until our biceps were almost bursting, then behind us until our triceps burned. Sometimes our hands were under the bucket handles and sometimes on top, so our forearms got a work out.

  Of all Strabo’s dirty little tricks, situlae was the worst. I even saw Minutus, despite his size, weeping one day because of the pain in his shoulders and arms. But, Strabo kept driving us, shouting at us to move faster and to keep our buckets up, saying that in order to wield the infantryman’s weapons in battle— the gladius, scutum, and pilum—we needed upper-body strength.

  There were nights, as I hit my cot, I couldn’t feel my arms and shoulders at all, and my legs ached like a bad tooth. And, the nights when I could hit my cot were the best ones. Every night, we each pulled a guard watch, sometimes two. Despite our exhaustion, we didn’t dare fall asleep on guard. Bantus told us that sleeping on guard was punishable by death; it endangered everyone in the camp. An offender was cudgeled to death in front of the entire legion by his tent mates. We didn’t question whether this applied to us guarding a tent full of recruits in the middle of a legionary camp; none of us wanted to find out—especially after what happened to Rufus.

  We were running buckets one afternoon. We had all learned the trick of not filling the buckets up to the top to lessen the weight. We had to be careful because Strabo was wise to most soldiers’ tricks, but as long as we didn’t overdo it, we could usually get away with a few ligulae less than a full bucket. That day, Rufus was having some problems. He had hurt his back earlier in the week when he had stumbled during one of the conditioning marches, but Strabo had refused to send him to the medics, telling him he was a puella for even asking. So, instead of spilling a few ligulae of water out of his bucket, he spilled most of it. Strabo caught him. We all thought it was a joke, part of the game.

  Strabo decided to use Rufus to demonstrate what happens when a “Roman soldier fails in his assigned duty,” as Strabo stated the charge.

  Next morning, before chow, Strabo lined us up in a small drill field near the praetorium. He marched Rufus out in front of the formation and announced that for failing in his duties, Rufus would suffer a castigatio of ten blows with the optio’s staff. Rufus removed his helmet and cap, unbuckled his soldier’s belt, stripped off his recruit tunic, and while Bantus held his wrists, Strabo inflicted the castigatio.

  To his credit, Rufus did not once cry out—despite the fact that we could see each blow smack across his shoulders and drive the breath out of his body. At one point, Rufus seemed to stumble forward into Bantus, who straightened him up and urged him to take his correction like a Roman. When it was over, Strabo was sweating from the exertion, and Rufus’ back was striped crimson and white from the beating. Rufus slowly put his tunic back on and rebuckled the belt around his waist. He winced as he lifted his arms to pull his pilleum cap down on his head but managed to regain control of himself. He tied his helmet straps under his chin and took his place back in our formation.

  Strabo announced to us that the castigatio we had just witnessed, a beating with an optio’s hastile staff, was one of the mildest forms of discipline in the legion. Had Rufus failed in his duty in the presence of or in contact with the enemy, he would have been beaten to death. Having said that, Strabo led us out of camp on our conditioning march.

  After three weeks, we lost Bantus and Tulli. They were assigned to a centuria in the Fifth Cohort. Tulli was pleased. He said that was far enough forward in the battle line to have honor and far enough back not to be semper immerda. Strabo named Minutus as our acting decanus because he had kept his nose clean, and he was the biggest guy in our contubernium—far too big for us to say no to easily. I replaced Tulli as acting tesserarius, but this was no break for me. I still had to take my turn on the sentry duty roster, and I also had to ensure that every relief was made throughout the night. I soon learned to sleep in two- to three-hour snatches. Strabo said that was good training.

  During the fourth week, we began our weapons training. Strabo lined us up and marched us over to supply to draw our combat armor. There was no point in doing weapons practice in our tunics, he told us. That was not the way we would actually fight.

  “Train the way you fight; fight the way you train,” he said. “That’s the Roman way!”

  First, we turned in our training helmets for the newer models that we would actually wear in combat. They were heavier, but they had better protection, a rear neck guard, wider cheek guards, and a reinforced “brow” above the eyes. Strabo inspected each of our helmets to be sure that they weren’t rejects that the supply people were trying to fob off on us. He said the metal had to be of a uniform thickness, with reinforcement over the crown of the head and no sign of repair welds.

  Loquax, noticing the socket on top of the helmet, asked when we were going to get our red infantry crests.

  “When you’ve earned it, Tiro!” Strabo snapped.

  At the next station, we were issued our body armor, a coat of chainmail called lorica hamata. When we got outside the tent, Strabo had us lay our loricae out for his inspection. He talked us through what he was doing so we would eventually be able to do it ourselves. First, he told us to be sure the lorica is iron, not brass. Iron rusts and is a pain to keep clean, but it’s much stronger than brass, and that might be the difference between just getting the wind knocked out of us when some Kraut podex tries to stick a sword through us and having the medicus try to reassemble our guts so we look neat on the funeral pyre.

  Next, Strabo instructed us to check the size of the rings—smaller is stronger than bigger—and to check how the rings are entwined with each other. Each ring should be entwined with a minimum of four other rings. The more connections, the more protection. There should be no broken rings and no rings missing rivets. If we found any of these, we should take the lorica back to supply and draw a new one.

  We had to make sure the leather closure straps were present and not frayed. We didn’t want a strap breaking in combat and our armor falling off. “Very embarrassing and usually quite fatal,” Strabo quipped.

  Next, we should check the shoulder straps for fraying. That’s where we would be attaching an additional layer of mail to protect us from slashing attacks and ax blows coming down over the top of the scutum, a favorite trick of those long-haired Gauls on the other side of the Alps. That shoulder armor was something else we didn’t want falling off when it was needed.

  Next, we had to check the fit. For this, Strabo went back into the supply tent and returned with a pile of what looked like padded red jackets and a bunch of red rags.

  “Take off your belts and put these on over your tunics,” he told us, handing out the jackets. “This is your subarmalis. It gives your shoulders and body some padding from the chainmail.”

  We put the subarmales on and closed them with lacings up the front. When he was done, Minutus, who had struggled to close the jacket, looked a bit like a giant red sausage. Short leather straps sewn on both sleeves covered the upper arms, and a skirt of leather straps covered the crotch and upper legs.

  Pustula started strapping his belt back on over the subarmalis, but Strabo stopped him. The belt went over the lorica.

  When we all had our subarmales on, Strabo took one of the red rags and called Felix over to him. He threw the rag around Felix’s neck, and just as we were convinced Strabo was going to strangle him, he said, “This is your sudarium, your infantry scarf. It’s good for a lot of things: rub
bing the sweat out of your eyes on the march, wiping the snot off your noses on a cold day, or plugging holes in a buddy; but its customary use is to pad the neck to keep it from being torn to shreds by the iron rings of your lorica. You tie it like this.”

  Strabo tied the sudarium around Felix’s neck, saying, “Tie it this way so some podex doesn’t grab hold of it in a fight and strangle you with it.”

  We each picked one out of the pile, and we tied them around our necks like we had been shown.

  Finally, Strabo told us to strap on our loricae. This was a two-man job. Felix held up my lorica in front of me, and I put my arms through the sleeves in the chainmail jacket and moved forward until it rested on my shoulders. Then, Felix moved behind me and pulled the lorica tight across my body.

  “How’s that feel, Pagane?” I heard Strabo’s voice behind me. “Should be tight enough to give you protection, but loose enough for you to breathe.”

  Felix adjusted my straps, then handed me the ends of my belt. Before I could buckle it, Strabo stopped me.

  “Look over here, boys!” he called. “I want to show you a little infantryman’s trick with these belts.”

  Strabo grabbed my lorica just below where my belt would ride and pulled it up a bit. Then, he told me to buckle my belt. When I did, he let the resulting fold of the lorica fall into place on top of my belt.

  “Look here!” he said. “If you adjust the lorica over the belt like this, the belt takes some of the weight off your shoulders. That way, your gladius and scutum can move more quickly in combat. That could be the difference between walking back from a fight and being carried back.”

  Then, using my lorica as an example, he said, “Be sure the ends of the coat overlap by at least two palms in the back and extend at least three palms below your balls.”

  “Now, jump up and down, Pagane!”

  “Qui’ vis m’agere?” I challenged, thinking he was putting me on.

  “Jump up and down, Maggot!” Strabo ordered.