Lindsay Powell's Blog

Lindsay Powell

The Author's Notebook

Operation Neptune

This entry was posted on 5/29/2009 11:24 PM and is filed under Footnotes.

I was out and about in Austin today and a licence plate on the back of a shiny black Cadillac caught my eye. It was one those plates with the Purple Heart screen-printed on it. The plate was personalized and bore the legend ‘ITHURT’. Wounded soldiers, it seems, have a warped sense of humour.

It reminded me that June 6 is the anniversary of the D-Day Landings in Normandy during World War II. Sixty-five years have passed since that momentous event. The statistics of that event are still staggering:

The operation was the largest single-day amphibious invasion of all time, with 160,000 troops landing on June 6, 1944. 195,700 Allied naval and merchant navy personnel in over 5,000 ships were involved. The landings took place along a 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. (1)

The cost in lives was high – an estimated 10,000 casualties – but it was less than the planners had feared it could be. Without the meticulous planning the casualties could, would, have been much higher.

In researching my book, EAGLES OVER GERMANIA, set in the time of another war against Germans (the one fought between Romans and the ancient peoples north of the Rhine between 12-9BCE) I was struck by the amazing level of thought even the ancient planners had invested in their invasion.

Some of the amazing ‘not widely known’ factoids to emerge from my research include:

The Romans’ preparations for their sea and invasion took two years, from 14-13BCE: the Allies’ preparations for the D-Day Landings also took two years, 1943-44CE (5).
One of the codenames used for the D-Day Landings, better known as Operation Overlord, was Operation Neptune (1, 5). Neptunus was the Roman god of the sea. (What the Roman planners called their military operation is not known).
The name German comes from the Latin germanus meaning ‘of the same parents’ or ‘blood relative’ (6). These peoples were actually not one, but several separate nations or tribes who bore their own unique names and identities, such as the Cherusker, Markomannen and Sugambrer: they did not call themselves ‘Germanen’. It seems the name ‘Germani’ was popularized by the Roman Julius Caesar in his Commentaries on the Gallic War.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Roman forces was Caesar Augustus, but he delegated prosecution of the bella Germaniae to his youngest stepson, the 24-year old Nero Claudius Drusus (known to history as Drusus the Elder). In preparing for the war, he oversaw a massive build out of military infrastructure and assembly of supplies with the help of 30,000-40,000 troops. For the time they truly were massive.

During the years 14-13BCE, Drusus established fortresses (some built to house two legions) along the Rhine at Xanten (Vetera), Neuss (Novaesium) and Mainz (Moguntiacum) with smaller forts in between, such as Moers Asberg (Asciburgium), Bonn (Bonna), and possibly Koblenz (Castellum apud Confluentes), Bingen am Rhein (Bingium) and Speyer.

These ‘winter camps’, as the Romans called them, were linked by metalled military roads to allow men and materiel to move quickly between the locations.

A fleet of ships was constructed to ferry troops, animals and equipment into the war zone in Magna Germania. From Tacitus’ account of Germanicus’ later amphibious campaign, we know they used flat-bottomed barges to carry the animals and multi-oared transports (liburnae, naves longae, 2) to carry the troops – about one thousand vessels in all. The remains of a hull of a Roman barge were recently found at Woerden, The Netherlands and dated to a hundred years after The German Wars (3). It measured 100 Roman feet (approximately 30 metres) in length and required a crew of at least twelve rowers to power it.

A canal (Fossa Drusiana) was also constructed from the Rhine to the Gelderse IJssel or Vecht rivers – scholars continue to debate the precise location of the structure – to provide access to Lake Flevo (Zuider Zee). This construction would save the Roman fleet from making a dangerous detour out from the Rhine to the North Sea. A mole or dam was created at Herwen (Carvium) to regulate the flow of water between the rivers and the inland sea.

This investment attests to the considerable care taken in preparing for this Roman D-Day-like campaign. Whose were the brains behind the plan? It possibly hints at the genius of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa at work (4). He was an admiral and, after all, the architect of Augustus’ naval victories at Actium, Mylae and Naulochus. He also knew about massive civil engineering constructions, being the architect of great buildings and public works, such as the Pantheon, and the overseer to repairs to the Aqua Marcia and water supply network in Rome. He had also been governor of Gaul twice and had been only the second Roman of status to cross the Rhine since Julius Caesar. Agrippa had an unusually deep familiarity with his Germanic adversary and their terrain.

How the subsequent war went you can read in my article, ‘Bella Germaniae: The German Wars of Drusus the Elder and Tiberius’ in the Ancient Warfare Magazine Special Issue available now direct from the publisher or selected newsagents (7). Treat yourself to a copy of this limited edition Teutoburg second millenium issue: order your copy today at Ancient Warfare Special 1

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