RetroWARTHINK 012: Saving Private Caesar: Where is Our Roman-Style Combat Engineering Today?
Not going well for Roman marines, huh?
The contubernium was the smallest organized unit of Soldiers in the Roman Army and was composed of eight legionaries, the equivalent of a modern squad. The men within the contubernium were known as contubernales.[1] Ten contubernia were grouped into a centuria. Soldiers of a contubernium shared a tent, and could be rewarded or punished together as a unit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contubernium
Looking carefully at ancient warfare, one arrives at the inescapable conclusion--the Roman Legions were balanced force structures of firepower, protection and mobility whereas today, our light infantry, Airborne and Amphibious force structures are dangerously and potentially fatally imbalanced--lacking protection & mobility once away from their motor-driven delivery means.
In the rock, paper, scissors of seeking asymmetric combat advantage, today's infantry--which are basically foot missile troops with 300 shots compared to the Legionaire's 1-2 spears or 5-10 darts--except WITHOUT BODY SHIELDS to withstand enemy bullet missile attacks. It's too bad Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Gladiator's opening scenes of Romans attacking Germanic tribes had the former holding Pila spears but they are not shown throwing them in missile volleys before closing to within sword range. The Roman Legions were primarily missile troops 1st, before doing the sexy Hollywood sword & shield stuff.
Love the arrow-resistant, segmented body armor, too!
Roman infantry could link their body shields making themselves armored formations into walking tortoise tanks and even more importantly constantly fortified themselves with wall shielding in an amazingly aggressive manner. Romans chasing the Spartacus rebel army literally walled-off the entire southern boot of Italy to trap & destroy them. Wow. Today, our lazy milspeeple have no such offensive combat engineering mentality that YES, could even defeat our missile firepower once they knew the problem/solution essence is a sand bag stops 7.62mm bullets and 2x sand bags 12.7mm projectiles, cold. Sand in the front and back pockets of a plate carrier coms to mind and begs the question why no one scheduled to die in WW1 didn't try it even with dirty dirt. Julius Caesar if confronted with the Afghanistan Sub-National Conflict (SNC) would have immediately WALLED-off the entire border trace no problemo with Roman Soldiers and hand tools--not one peep of it's-too-hard defeatist BS you hear today from Soldiers who would have MACHINES do 99% the work.
The Romans clearly understood the physical, cause-effect mechanics of war. When defeated by "tanks" aka war elephants, they got themselves their own pacheyderms and R & Ded potential countermeasures. The Romans building upon previous Greek siege engines, adding better armor and missile armaments, they knew a War Wagon with wooden walls could shrug off enemy arrow and spear missiles.
While Roman Generals often used horse Cavalry with shields, spears & swords as the battle-winner--but the mystery is would they being 90% slow, low-mobility foot infantry have withstood entire Mongol horse Cavalry armies shooting 300 meter range-reach arrows?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGXD3NumQrs
The infantry-centric, Romans could defeat horse Cavalry because their segmented body armor could withstand arrow direct hits not 1st stopped by body shields if their commanders cleverly used closed terrain to lure them into a close-range ambush trap. The spear-carrying Parthian horse Cavalry were defeated sometimes in this way--but not their horse-archers. But would the Mongols be easily lured when they need not ever get close since their missile firepower range could keep them at a safe stand-off? How long would Roman shielding withstand Mongol missile barrages?
Mongol Sneak Preview: Parthian Horse-Archers Defeat Roman Legions from Safe Stand-Offs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVaADXhnxuE&vl=en
The Parthians kept up a constant barrage of horse-archers' arrows by camels resupplying them. Asshole Crassus who put down the Spartacus slave revolt got his comeuppance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus
His legions were defeated at Carrhae (modern Harran in Turkey) in 53 BC by a numerically inferior Parthian force. Crassus' legions were mainly infantry men and were not prepared for the type of swift, cavalry-and-arrow attack in which Parthian troops were particularly adept. The Parthians would get within shooting range, rain a barrage of arrows down upon Crassus's troops, turn, fall back, and charge forth with another attack in the same vein. They were even able to shoot as well backwards as they could forwards, increasing the deadliness of their onslaught.[34] Crassus refused his quaestor Gaius Cassius Longinus's plans to reconstitute the Roman battle line, and remained in the testudo formation to protect his flanks, thinking that the Parthians would eventually run out of arrows. The Parthians had stationed camels carrying arrows to allow their archers to continually reload and relentlessly barrage the Romans until dusk. The Romans successfully retreated to Carrahe, leaving many wounded to be later slaughtered by the Parthians.
Subsequently Crassus' men, being near mutiny, demanded he parley with the Parthians, who had offered to meet with him. Crassus, despondent at the death of his son Publius in the battle, finally agreed to meet the Parthian general; however, when Crassus mounted a horse to ride to the Parthian camp for a peace negotiation, his junior officer Octavius suspected a Parthian trap and grabbed Crassus' horse by the bridle, instigating a sudden fight with the Parthians that left the Roman party dead, including Crassus.[35] A story later emerged to the effect that after Crassus' death, the Parthians poured molten gold into his mouth as a symbol of his thirst for wealth.[36]
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Would the Romans have stood up to Mongol horse-archer armies?
This is your answer.
NO.
Yet more reasons to question Napoleon's horse Cavalry being armed with long poles when they should have been archers--even in the gunpowder musketry age.
Fortunately, God our Creator intervened to save Western Civilization by TBATE killing the Mongol's war-conquest-lusting leaders.
Caesar Hits-the-Beach on the British Isles
So far, so good...
The clever Romans DIY created their own amphibious warfare ships that could carry infantry and at least some horses for spear/sword/shield Cavalrymen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1NdZ87eUWc&vl=en
The 1st British invasion had Roman infantry in chest-deep water because their ships couldn't beach themselves exactly like the "Saving Private Ryan" D-Day fiasco of unarmored Higgins boats--Americans copying the Japanese instead of thinking for themselves like the British who created ARMORED landing craft.
https://1sttac.blogspot.com/2020/06/retrowarthink-009-modelvision-bow-ramp.html
Seeing his men being pierced to pieces by enemy missiles, Caesar maneuvered some ships to missile attack the Britons and the Roman infantry was then able to get onto dry land--exactly like how U.S. Navy destroyers risked themselves into point blank range to silence German guns on D-Day not of course shown in the Spielberg movie. The point today is our loud-mouthed braggart USMC has taken no steps to firepower clear or smokescreen blind, enemy-held beaches instead giving up on fighting inland in favor of playing easy Coast Watchers.
In Caesar's 2nd British invasion he improved his amphibious ship designs so they were dragged onto the beach and guarded there so as to avoid TBATE stormy weather damaging them like happened during invasion 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOCG8uqaIEk
Making Horse-Mobile Roman Legions?
Two auxiliary “servants”, vaguely equivalent to modern logistical support troops, were assigned to each contubernium.[1] They were responsible for the care of the contubernium's pack mule, making sure that the legionaries had water during the march, and may have had special skills like blacksmithing or carpentry (however legionaries often fulfilled specialist roles so it is very possible that they were simply grooms and servants.) There were 10 contubernia (8 men) each led by a decanus, in a century (100 men including 20 support staff) which was commanded by a centurion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contubernium
The question of MOBILITY is a huge problem for the Roman foot-sloggers so they compensated by building paved roads to up foot speeds from 1 mph to 4 mph and move supplies by wheeled wagons/carts powered by horsepower or mulepower.
Roman Road Widths
Romans as a non-equestrian society simply didn't mass-produce lots of horsemen to be composed of horse archer armies like the Mongols born in the saddle. Why shooting arrows at targets from horseback didn't become a sport as a cultural norm also damns Napoleon years later to not have stand-off firepower, horse-archer Cavalry when he needed it at Waterloo in 1815.
What Should the U.S. ARMY Do Today?
Every 4x Soldiers joining the U.S. ARMY should be formed into a COHORT TEAM and stay together for their entire 1st tour of duty aka enlistment to foster esperit de corps and COHORTesion aka cohesion. The actual Roman cohesive small unit termed Contuberium is not well-known so we apologize for hijacking the term, "COHORT" which was used by the Army in the '80s for a similiar personnel leadership policy in the 1980s.
Every COHORT FireTEAM or ManeuverTEAM would be transported as a Squad in its own tracked, armored tank aka war wagon self-propelled by enginery instead of horses. The LIGHT infantry would operate LIGHT tanks of under 20-tons with aircraft GeoStrategic/Operational/Tactical 3D maneuver and maximum closed terrain 2D maneuver powers. We have the M113 Gavin light tanks that can be upgraded into the 21st Century maneuver platforms we need to combat overmatch all foes. America as a motor-driven society can create enough Soldier-Driver expertise so each tank has a Driver A and Driver B and create a career path for them so they can constantly improve into maximum driving skills.
Roman Water Cart
When operating dismounted away from their tank, the Squad should have an electric All-Terrain, All-Purpose Cart/Sled (eATACS) like the Roman packmule to transport the FireTEAM's heavy weapons & ammunition but not needing 2x sustainment troops because it would be self-propelled by electric motors and Lithium-Ion batteries rechargeable by the tank's electrical system, solar panels etc.
Semper Airborne!
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