Foreign Soldiers

Lately, as I mentioned in my previous posts, I have been watching TIME TEAM, an archaeology program set in England. Many of their digs involve Roman Forts from the Roman conquest which took plae at the turn of the around 100 AD and the occupation lasted until 400 AD when the Roman Empire disintegratedd and the Anglo Saxons invaded Britain, followed by the Danes. They were, in turn, invaded by the Normans (who were North Men, or Vikings, who had stayed in France long enough to become Normans) and they were in turn defeated by Britons (the earliest invaders and inhabitants for whom Britain was named) and a cooalition of Anglo Saxons and Danes who had settled there so long they had become something new, a cohesive British force, under King Alfred, who united Britain. Everybody settled down and the United Kingdom went on about its business which was taking Scotland from the Picts and Ireland from the Irish.

Anyhow, Amongst the rubble left by the Romans, are the bits and pieces, Roman coins, some burial headstones, broken pottery and the ghosts of all those soldiers stationed there, not to mention their offspring since many of them claimed wives while they were settled in their fronteir forts.

Today when I finally had the time to read the Sunday New York Times and the Book Review section, there was a review of a book about the lives of the Roman soldiers. Apparently, according to the review, a lot of the Roman soldiers were surprising literate because the army demanded detailed records of everything (kind of reminds me of the Germans in WWII). According to gravestones mentioned in the review, the soldiers in Britain came from what is now Spain, Bulgaria and Hungary as well as Italy. Watching another tv series about the Roman occupation of what is now Germany (but was then Gaul and Barbarian Northern Europe), up to the Rhine, I learned for the first time that not only did the occupying Roman army demand tribute money, they also demanded slaves and young men to serve in the military. I wondered how many of those men from Spain, Hungary or Bulgaria, had also been captives forced into the military. The book is called GLADUS.

That reminded me, as history tends to stretch from one topic and period to another, of the Hessian forces forced to fight in the British colony of America during the Revolution. When I volunteered at Whitall House in Red Bank Battlefield, National Park, NJ, I was very curious about those poor young men, conscripted by their ruling aristocratic princes into armies which were then sent to fight all over the place and even rented out! A very large proportion of the fighting forces arrayed against us colonists in the Revolution were Hessians (from that same area of southern Germany once occupied by the Romans, along the Rhine). I always wondered what happened to the ones left behind after the battles, the wounded the deserters, the imprisoned. There are a couple of diaries of soldiers, officers, which I have read, but it is the everyman, the Joseph Plum Martin of the Hessian army who I would like to hear from.

If you are looking for places to visit, and if you haven't already been there, don't miss National Park, Red Bank Battlefield. It offers a splendid view over the Delaware, a beautiful colonial Quaker farm entirely intact despite the battle that took place in the apple orchard, and a fascinating story. The house may be closed still due to the pandemic, but the battlefield is a lovely place to walk and have a picnic lunch, and there is a great playground if you bring the kids. There are restrooms and informative signage to help you get an idea of the place.

Today is International Women's Day, so let me mention Ann Whitall, the Quaker farm wife who endured the battle in the apple orchard and is said via oral history to have helped care for the wounded soldiers after the battle (of whom there were about 400.) The same oral history says that the pile of amputated limbs rose to the level of the window in the room taken over as a surgery in thei Whitall's house. The family had taken refuge with other family members in Woodbury during the battle. Ann Whitall left a diary from 1762, unfortunately not from the time of the Revolution, but I transcribed it at the Gloucester County Historyical Society so it could be accessed on the computer. Mainly she deals with her religious experience. Ann Whitall was an old time Quaker in the sense that she believed in hellfire and damnation and she strove passionately to work on her soul and the souls of those around her. She was an avid attendant at Quaker Meeting a few times each week. Needless to say, a diary is only a very narrow window on a full life, and Ann, being no doubt, certin that God was watching over her shoulder, rarely dealt with the mundane details of her ordinary life, which is too bad, because I wanted to know what she cooked how she got along with the indentured servants who worked for she and her husband, and what she did during the day. The house has been loaned her actual desk by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the DAR, the same desk where presumable she wrote her diary.

Since today is Int'l Woman's Day, and I mentioned the Roman invasion of Britain, let me also mention Queen Boudicca, who also attempted to pull together the fractious tribes of Britain to fight off the Romans, and was briefly successful before being ultimately defeated. England is notable for the heritage of warror queens such as the first Queen Elizabeth who fought off the invasion of Spain via the armada and who sent out the explorers who invaded and settled in the New World. And speeaking of explorers, it was Queen Isabella who sent out Columbus to invade in the Carribean. The tv is replete with series dealing with British royalty at present, such as the eries, THE CROWN, and for a bit of Anglo Saxon archaeology in England there is a good movie called THE DIG.

HAPPY TRAILS - if you want to contact me to continue the conversation, use my e-mail the blogspot comments function is awful. wrightj45@yahoo.com

JO ANN