A Modern Legionary

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "A Modern Legionary" by John Patrick Le Poer. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

A Modern Legionary, a classical book, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

Rome's Vengeance In the year A.D. 9, three Roman Legions under Quintilius Varus were betrayed by the Germanic war chief, Arminius, and destroyed in the forest known as Teutoburger Wald. Six years later Rome is finally ready to unleash Her vengeance on the barbarians. The Emperor Tiberius has sent his adopted son, Germanicus Caesar, into Germania with an army of forty-thousand legionaries. The come not on a mission of conquest, but one of annihilation. With them is a young legionary named Artorius. For him the war is a personal vendetta; a chance to avenge his brother, who was killed in Teutoburger Wald. In Germania Arminius knows the Romans are coming. He realizes that the only way to fight the legions is through deceit, cunning, and plenty of well-placed brute force. In truth he is leery of Germanicus, knowing that he was trained to be a master of war by the Emperor himself. The entire Roman Empire held its collective breath as Germanicus and Arminius faced each other in what would become the most brutal and savage campaign the world had seen in a generation; a campaign that could only end in a holocaust of fire and blood.

This book gives the reader a straightforward and continuous survey of the history of the French Foreign Legion. By outlining the Legion’s vicissitudes, victorious campaigns, epic marches, heroic and sometimes hopeless stands, dirtiest combats and dramatic defeats, but also by briefly placing the Legion back in the historical background of France, and by describing its development, organization, uniforms, equipments and weapons, the author hopes to dispel myths, and try to give a true and accurate picture of what the French Foreign Legion has been from 1831 until today. There are well-researched, detailed line drawings throughout.

This is a reference guide to Roman legionary fortresses throughout the former Roman Empire, of which approximately eighty-five have been located and identified. With the expansion of the empire and the garrisoning of its army in frontier regions during the 1st century AD, Rome began to concentrate its legions in large permanent bases. Some have been explored in great detail, others are barely known, but this book brings together for the first time the legionary fortresses of the whole empire. An introductory section outlines the history of legionary bases and their key components. At the heart of the book is a referenced and illustrated catalogue of the known bases, each with a specially prepared plan and an aerial photograph. A detailed bibliography provides up-to-date publication information. The book is accompanied by a website providing online links to sites relevant to particular fortresses and a Google Earth file containing all of the known fortress locations.

“A pleasure to read and nearly impossible to put down.” –Army Times “Embodies an experience that many have enjoyed in fantasy–few in reality.” –The Washington Post The French Foreign Legion–mysterious, romantic, deadly–is filled with men of dubious character, and hardly the place for a proper Englishman just nineteen years of age. Yet in 1960, Simon Murray traveled alone to Paris, Marseilles, and ultimately Algeria to fulfill the toughest contract of his life: a five-year stint in the Legion. Along the way, he kept a diary. Legionnaire is a compelling, firsthand account of Murray’s experience with this legendary band of soldiers. This gripping journal offers stark evidence that the Legion’s reputation for pushing men to their breaking points and beyond is well deserved. In the fierce, sun-baked North African desert, strong men cracked under brutal officers, merciless training methods, and barbarous punishments. Yet Murray survived, even thrived. For he shared one trait with these hard men from all nations and backgrounds: a determination never to surrender. “The drama, excitement, and color of a good guts-and-glory thriller.” –Dr. Henry Kissinger

Of all the armies that have marched through the pages of history, few have captured the imagination as fully as the Legions of Rome. History echoes with the deeds of the mighty Roman Legions, but that hard won glory would never have been possible without the extraordinary skill and courage of the individual Legionaries themselves. Just what kind of man did it take to serve and fight in an army capable of holding most of the known world under the control of the Caesars? Marcus Sulpicius Vepitta was one such man. Meticulously researched and drawing heavily on the work of both classical writers and modern scholars, Legionary is his story. This is not a tale of a man rising to fame and riches, just an ordinary young recruit as he submits to the iron discipline of the XIIII Gemina Legion. Proudly claiming his place in its ranks as it joins a huge army gathering in Gaul to seize the distant land of Britannia for the Emperor Claudius. This book invites the reader to suspend disbelief and step back two thousand years in time to enter Vepitta's world. A world very different from our own, where modern sensibilities and morality have no place and a conscience is something that very few can enjoy as the mighty Roman Legions engage the native Britons in ferocious battles for control of Rome's newest province.