To appreciate the meaning of the experience to the participants in the battle, we need to imagine what it was like to be there. We have no firsthand description of the battle, only the contradictory general accounts written later by historians in Rome (see chapter 3). For the thousands who died in the battle, the experience was the final one. But for the survivors—the vast majority of the German participants, the legionaries and auxiliaries who escaped, and the Roman soldiers who lived on as slaves in northern Europe— the experience of the battle had a vital and enduring impact. What they saw, heard, felt, and smelled during this brief, but intense, battle stayed with them for the rest of their lives. Their memories of the event, in all its horrors, affected their attitudes toward other people, toward warfare, and toward everyday life. Their memories of the battle came to play important roles in historical tradition, in legends, in myths, and in folklore. Battles are always powerful psychological and emotional experiences, as well as physical ones. Memories of the battle at Kalkriese survive in the historical tradition of Rome and perhaps in legends and myths from medieval times in northern Europe, such as the Nibelungenlied.
What Was It Like?
The battlefield was a scene of utter horror and human devastation that we can scarcely imagine. Razor-sharp spears careened off helmets and armor, or sliced into the soft flesh underneath the metal protectors. Men screamed, trying to wrench embedded spears from their bodies, at the same time that the surging mass of panicked soldiers crushed against them. Hundreds fell to the damp ground, pierced by spears or simply losing their footing in the chaos. Men shrieked in agony as the spearpoints penetrated their flesh, or moaned in pain as their lives ebbed away. Blood flowed everywhere, spurting from punctured arteries, and oozing from gaping wounds. Some spears tore open men's abdomens, and their intestines spilled out onto the blood-soaked track. The stench of blood quickly enveloped the entire landscape.
Once face-to-face combat ensued, attacking Germans thrust long lances into the chests, stomachs, and faces of disoriented and staggering Romans, and hacked madly with their swords at the outer line of legionaries. With freedom to move forward and back, and without the impediments of bodies covering the ground where they stood, the Germans had an easy time overpowering their adversaries. With their swords, they slashed at arms, necks, and legs, severing limbs and heads from torsos. The track became a mass of bloodied, mutilated bodies, many still alive but dying. Blood flowed in little rivulets across the track and down into the marsh, and all the ground was drenched in gore.
How Did the Soldiers Die?
THE WEAPONS
The Germans used mainly spears, lances, and swords to attack the Roman soldiers, and many carried light circular shields to ward off the legionaries' attempts at fighting back. But some wielded other kinds of weapons, different from those traditionally placed beside heroic warriors in their graves. These included prosaic implements, such as clubs, shovels, meat hooks, and billhooks— the kinds of everyday objects that peasants have always grabbed from their toolsheds when they rushed off from their farms to j oin in war. In the chaos of the close combat that followed the first minutes of the spear barrage, these everyday implements were highly effective in delivering punishing and often fatal blows to their adversaries. The Romans, who were restricted to a defensive role throughout the encounter, wore the protection of their helmets and body armor, and with their swords and daggers they attempted to ward off the blows of their attackers.
THE WOUNDS
In the battle at Kalkriese, the Romans and, to a much lesser extent, the Germans suffered three principal kinds of wounds. Spears caused mainly puncture wounds. The Germans' spears weighed an average of one and a half pounds. Thrown at a speed of fifty-five feet per second, they struck with seventy footpounds of energy. This energy was concentrated at a tiny point where the tip of the spear entered soft flesh, and the sharp edges of the spearpoint caused it to penetrate deeper into the body. Depending upon how hard it was thrown, the angle at which it struck, and the part of the body it entered, the spear could cause a shallow or a deep puncture wound. If it reached a vital organ such as the heart or lungs, the spear caused death quickly. If it lodged in the thigh or stomach, it caused a slower death through loss of blood.
Swords were used by the Germans at Kalkriese in a way that caused mainly gashes. Swords—short swords in particular—could also be used with a stabbing motion, in which case they could inflict deep and wide puncture wounds, but the evidence of the bones indicates that the Germans employed their swords mainly to slash and hack at their enemies. As with puncture wounds caused by spears, deep gashes into vital organs caused immediate death. More typical were slashes to the face, neck, arms, abdomen, and legs, that opened wide gashes, leading to rapid loss of blood. When a warrior chopped off a legionary's head, death was, of course, immediate. When he hacked off an arm or leg, the victim was immobilized, and rapid blood loss ensued, resulting in death in a matter of minutes.
The standard Roman sword—the gladius—weighed two or three pounds. Some of the German warriors had Roman swords; others wielded swords of various shapes and sizes that were current in northern Europe. Many of these were considerably larger than the Roman sword, weighing up to 4 pounds. The Roman gladius typically hit with an impact energy of about 100 footpounds, the larger German swords with two or three times that much. The razor-sharp blades of these weapons could create long and deep gashes in unarmored flesh. The large amount of energy that a heavy slashing sword delivered meant that it could also fracture bones.
Fractures were caused by severe blows rather than by cuts. Seventy foot-pounds of impact energy can break any bone except the skull. Even when the body is protected by armor, severe blows delivered by swords, clubs, or any other heavy implements can cause fractures. In the melee on the battlefield when the Germans attacked the Romans face-to-face, many of the legionary soldiers suffered broken arm bones, leaving them unable to offer resistance. Once a soldier suffered one or more broken bones, he was rendered helpless. On the trackway at Kalkriese, such victims became impediments in the path of their fellows trying to defend themselves, rather than making any kind of useful contribution to the Roman effort.
Deaths on the Battlefield
As happens in many battles, the losers and winners differed not only in the proportions of men killed and wounded but also in the types of wounds suffered and, especially, in the ways they died. In ancient battles for which detailed historical documentation is available, usually fewer than 5 percent of the soldiers on the victorious side were killed. Given the conditions at Kalkriese, the number of German soldiers killed may well have been even lower.
ROMAN DEATHS
The Roman soldiers probably died of three main, interrelated causes—destruction of vital organs, shock, and loss of blood. In the initial spear barrage, many spears penetrated legionaries' necks, throats, and chests, causing quick death by hitting the spinal cord, lungs, or heart. In the intensely savage lance and sword attack that followed, the ferocious thrusting of the sharply pointed lances and the slashing of swords easily destroyed the same vital organs and others, leading to rapid death. A lance thrust to the heart, or the powerful slash of a four-pound, razor-sharp sword that severed a legionary's neck, meant instant death on the battlefield.
Shock, or circulatory collapse, played a major role in the killing. Loss of blood is the primary cause of shock, but emotional stress also plays an important part. The horror of the initial attack, the panic set off among both men and animals, and the rapid wounding of so many troops created ideal conditions for battle shock. Many men lost consciousness and collapsed, some to bleed to death, others never to regain consciousness.
Loss of blood was the most common cause of death and was linked to the other two causes. The principal weapons of the Germans—spears, lances, and swords—all caused wounds that bled profusely. In the chaos of the battle, with the crowded and jostling conditions and the barrage of projectiles and subsequent swarming of stabbing and slashing attackers, there was no chance for a wounded soldier to bind a bleeding wound, much less receive medical attention from a fellow legionary.
Not all Roman soldiers within the killing zone died immediately. Many who were wounded collapsed to the ground, but remained alive for hours, if their wounds did not bleed copiously. Some who collapsed of shock regained consciousness. But once the fiercest fighting was over, the Germans probably walked along the edges of the track, looking for signs of life and killing any wounded Roman soldiers who they could see were still alive. Many of the wounded, partly covered by their fallen comrades, or lying in the middle of the track, lived into the night, to die of exposure. The next day, as they scoured the battlefield for booty, the victors killed any who remained alive.
GERMAN DEATHS
For the victorious Germans, the situation was different. Many fewer Germans were killed or wounded than Romans, because they had the upper hand from the start. Although occasionally a small group of Romans was able to rally briefly and beat back a pack of charging Germans, wounding and killing a few of these lightly armored warriors in the process, such incidents were limited and short-lived. Out of the 18,000 Germans who participated, perhaps 500 were killed by Romans fighting back and another 1,500 wounded.
Because of the different styles of combat of the two sides, the wounds the Germans suffered tended to be different from those of the Romans. The Roman legionaries sustained largely puncture wounds, caused by the spears in the initial barrage, by lances, and, to a lesser extent, by swords in the direct attack. Germans tended to suffer laceration-type wounds—cuts and slashes from the Romans they attacked, as these desperately tried to defend themselves with their short swords. Some suffered the same kinds of wounds that their Roman counterparts did—gashes and punctures inflicted by Roman swords. Much less common were fractures, because the Romans were so limited in their fighting space that they were unable to deliver the kinds of hard blows that caused such wounds.
Unlike the Romans wounded in the battle, almost all of whom were subsequently killed by the Germans mopping up afterward, some of the German wounded had the chance to benefit from medical attention, depending upon the nature and severity of their wounds. With all of the interaction between German communities and the Roman world that is evident in trade goods, it is highly likely that some Germans learned Roman medical and surgical practices. Furthermore, when German tribal groups served as auxiliaries in the Roman army, some men probably received military medical training from the medical staffs of the Roman units with which they served.
The Roman military had a medical system that was extraordinary for the ancient world. It was based on the teachings of Greek medicine and emphasized both prevention—maintenance of conditions for good public health—and healing of battle-wounded soldiers. A nutritious diet, a carefully monitored water supply, and strict rules about sanitation helped keep the troops healthy. One result of this close attention to the soldiers' wellbeing was that Roman soldiers actually had average life spans longer than those of civilians, in spite of the dangers they faced in battle.
Gladiatorial combat in Rome surely helped inure Romans to the idea of battlefield injury and death. It also contributed to the development of highly skilled battlefield medicine. Doctors gained experience treating wounded gladiators and perhaps learned much about anatomy from dissecting those killed in the arena.
Medical professionals traveled with the legions and brought with them a variety of medical instruments, including probes, forceps, needles, and scalpels. Roman military doctors developed a special device that could remove arrows without tearing the tissue in which they were embedded. They created a surgical clamp that helped prevent gangrene. The most complex administration of medical treatment was carried out at elaborately provisioned hospitals at legionary bases, such as Xanten and
Haltern. Roman medical policy emphasized that in battle doctors had to get quickly to wounded soldiers in order to treat shock and halt bleeding, and this policy is credited with the relatively low death rate among Roman soldiers, at least in situations in which the Roman legions were victorious. At Kalkriese, of course, the situation was very different. The Roman army was not winning, and movement around the battlefield was virtually impossible. It is highly unlikely that medical personnel were able to aid wounded Roman soldiers in the battle.
For the Germans, the situation was different. Their wounded tended to suffer cut and slash wounds, often shallow in nature, rather than deep penetrations. Some German medical specialists had probably been trained to perform surgery and set broken bones, and they were likely proficient at staunching the flow of blood from wounds. Roman doctors carried out amputations when necessary and used drugs and herbs to help dull pain, and these skills may well have been transferred to their German counterparts. Thus many wounded Germans may have been saved by the attention of medical personnel who had been trained by Roman military doctors. But some kinds of wounds could not be treated by the available medical technology. If soldiers suffered deep penetration wounds, especially into the intestines or chest, infection, if not quick death, was probable. Severe fractures of the skull, especially if bone was knocked into the brain, could not be treated.
Many of the German wounded probably succumbed to the dreadful infections that accompanied many battle wounds in antiquity. Stab wounds from Roman swords would have been liable to become infected with tetanus, a bacterium common in soil abundant in the Kalkriese environment. Deep penetration wounds, and even deep gashes, if not properly cleaned, would very likely have led to tetanus infections and death. In several nineteenth-century battles, about 5 percent of the combatants contracted tetanus infections; of those, about 80 percent died.
Approximately 5 percent of the wounded combatants in ancient wars contracted gangrene, another infection caused by bacteria in soil. Washing of the wound could reduce the incidence, and amputation might save an infected limb, but if the infection was not caught in time, death was almost certain. Blood poisoning was another danger, especially when a main blood vessel was hit and the spot became infected. This infection, known as septicemia, was less common than tetanus and gangrene, but almost always fatal.
Among the German victors, then, hundreds probably died of horrible infections in the wounds they received in the battle, days or weeks after the conflict. Others, with less serious wounds that did not become infected, recovered completely.
The End for the Combatants
The next morning, groups of Germans would have begun the final stage in completing the battle. By this time, animals had begun to devour the corpses that littered the track. Foxes from the woods tore at legionaries' flesh with their sharp teeth. Weasels and mice scurried among the bodies, licking at gaping wounds. Vultures and crows stood on the dead, tearing at their internal organs with their sharp beaks. Colonies of ants, beetles, flies, and other insects swarmed over the corpses.
Small parties of Germans walked along the edges of the killing zone, looking for any wounded Romans who had survived the chilly night. Almost all of the wounded had died of shock, blood loss, or exposure, but here and there the Germans saw slight movement or heard groans. When they did, they sought out the source of the life sign, and thrust a spear or sword through the man's chest, silencing him permanently. Within a couple of hours, all was still on the battlefield, except for gnawing sounds made by the larger animals and squabbling between vultures and crows.
Now the Germans were making their preparations for the victory celebrations.
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