Chesty Puller glanced at the Chinese army surrounding his Marines at Chosin in 1950 and said:
“They’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us... they can’t get away this time.”
Caesar had a rough day of his own 2,000 years earlier... and he didn’t even have a shield.
At the Sabis River in 57 BC, Caesar “snatched a shield from a soldier in the rear, since he had come there without one,” then pushed to the front line (Gallic War 2.25).
Four feet of glued wood and calfskin, about 22 pounds, and none of it his.
The 12th Legion around Caesar was jam-packed so tight nobody could swing a sword, and every centurion (a Roman company captain) in the 4th cohort was dead.
A troop of his own allies, Treviri horsemen, took one look at the mess and got out of Dodge. They galloped home to announce Rome was beaten.
They left too soon. Never count Caesar (or Chesty Puller) out of a tough scrape.
So how did Caesar end up grabbing a private’s shield? Blame the Nervii, hiding in the impenetrable woods across the river.
Past Passport is a reader-supported publication. Free subscribers still get 3 full stories a month... but $5 a month unlocks the whole Battle Series, from Cannae to the Sabis, with a new battle added every week.
Rome met the Nervii armed…with shovels
Picture it. You’re digging Caesar’s camp on a hillside above the Sabis, half your pals are off hacking turf and timber for the rampart, and your helmet and shield are...over there somewhere.
Across the river stretches about 200 paces of open ground, then woods too thick to see into. Quiet woods. Too quiet.
The Nervii crouched in the dense forest, waiting for one signal: the Roman baggage train topping the hill.
When the first wagons popped over the rise, thousands poured out at once and scattered Caesar’s cavalry before it knew what hit it.
Caesar wrote that the enemy seemed to be “at the woods, in the river, and already on top of us” almost in the same moment.
Helmets? Forgetaboutit. Shield covers? Still on. Soldiers fell in under the first standard (the pole-mounted emblem every Roman unit rallied around) they spotted, whether it was theirs or not.
Trouble.
And the worst of it was headed for the right wing.
The 12th Legion ran out of officers before it ran out of Nervii
Nervii commander Boduognatus ignored the Roman left and center. He ordered his men to charge up the hill in a dense mass at the right wing. That’s where the 7th and 12th Legions stood with one flank hanging open.
Caesar rushed over and found the 12th’s standards all bunched in one spot... a bad news day in a Roman line. The 4th cohort’s standard-bearer was dead and the standard gone.
Damn near every centurion in the other cohorts was wounded or killed. Publius Sextius Baculus, the legion’s senior centurion, had taken so many wounds he couldn’t stand.
Think of the toughest guy in your group, the one everybody looks to when the wheels fall off... flat on the ground and out of the fight.
The Nervii kept climbing from below and curling around both sides. In Caesar’s own words, there was no reserve left to send up.
Behind the camp, a troop of ally horsemen watched it all.
Gaul’s bravest riders bailed at halftime
The Treviri horsemen weren’t cowards. Caesar admits they were known for courage all over Gaul.
But look at what they saw from the high ground. Roman cavalry and light troops were on the run, and the camp servants who’d wandered off to loot were sprinting the other way... with Nervii pouring into the Roman camp behind them.
So that was that. Game over.
They wheeled their horses and rode for home, back toward the Moselle, to report the Romans beaten and the camp and baggage in Nervii hands.
They saw every piece of that report with their own eyes. But they left before the ending.
Back on the right wing, Caesar started to rally the troops by shouting names….
Below the line: the roll call that turned the battle, and the tribe that fought standing on its own dead. Don’t ride home yet... free subscribers get 3 full stories a month, so spend one here.
