Roman Scouts...

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Do I remember right (and I usually do, as I have a garbage pit memory)  that someone on this board had set up some kind of kid's group, kind of like a Roman Boy scouts or something... I can't find it and I KNOW I saw it on RAT (well, old RAT, but...). Who was it? Was there a website? Is the posting still here somewhere?
Thanks for your help!
Best, DMV[/u]

[Los456]

Well once a year we have Roman Legion Boot Camp for the kids, Sons cousins, friends, it ends up being a 8 or 9 kids. We're getting ready to do it again. I may have mentioned that before. It goes a whole weekend. We've made Scutums, (Plywood, red paint and door handles) use xlarge red tshirts as tunics (though my kids has an actual kids Wool roman tunic I picked up at La Wren's nest. My sister made cloaks. I have 4 helmets plus we made some modified helmets from the toy store, and I've even made a few Kid's Lorica Segmentatas out of Cardboard and duct tape. We also have a bunch of wooden and plastic galdii I picked up at la Wren's nest plus numerous PVS/Foam swords and Pila we made for actual full contact fighting.

We normally start out with kitting out everyone and learning formations then we do some weapons practice and pila throwing. We then break out the lacrosse/hockey gear and do full contact SCA-style fighting for a while. There's eating chicken legs on the campfire and normally at least one long patrol through the woods out back in kit, (I'm talking like a mile and a half walk in rough terrain!) which entails fun stuff like crossing streams and swamps and basic legionary patrolling.

As I have a rather large 15mm Minatures Roman army(+ Gauls maybe a 1000 figs total at least), we also add in some miniatures gaming.

Every year we add a little something. Like this year we actually added Foam to our PVC swords to reduce skinned knuckles and hockey helmets so they can actually go full force bash each other. We'll also sleep out this year around the campfire in the back yard.

Where it got interesting was last summer. At Mom's house we kept all the kit there while we were moving. One day one of the old dogs from the neighborhood somehow was running around the yard. The kids last year had gotten pounced on by a dog in the back yard that ran at them through the woods. It didn't mean any harm but in it's enthusiasm it scratched a few of the kids and gave them a terrible fright.

The dog had been spotted outside but with a beautiful day I for damn sure wasn't going to have them stuck inside lik ethey wanted to be. So we reviewed our RLBC(Roman Legion Boot camp) procedures and developed an immediate action drill if the dog was spotted with all the kit readily accessible. Upon spotting a dog, the five biggest kids would grab their stuff and form a shield wall centered on the garage door while the two little ones were behind. As they backed up keeping the shieldwall and their before pila between themselves and the "dog threat", one at a time, they would peel off and head inside. It got a little dicey when there were two left, the two oldest boys (11 and 8.) But eventually one would break off and hold the door open for the last one who would fend off the dog until he could back in.

We practiced this drill about a dozen times (Hey they all had fun) until it worked like clockwork. But what would happen a real situation? Sure enough about a half hour after the last drill the dog was back. The littlest ones were the smart ones running into the garage, 2 other ran screaming for their lives into the next yard leaving the three oldest ones to grab their stuff. One broke ranks early and panicked but made it inside leaving two left that actually had their weapons and tried to do their duty to protect the little ones.

It was abcsolutely hillarious to watch, the dog of course, a big germam Shepard with his tounge lolling in the heat seemed to be having as much fun as I was. Definately a "green" legion...

Los

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Definately a "green" legion...

Los

This is AWESOME! Is it only for boys or do you let girls into it too? I really think you should build some kind of website... what a great way to get kids interested in history, plus... in a few years, you'll have a whole set of new recruits who won't be new and won't be green!''
Very Happy

Thanks very much for sharing this! And let me know if you want to do a website, I'll give you free space w/ no ads and stuff on reenactor.Net.
Best, DMV

[marsvigilia]

Sounds like you have a blast.
What ages do you find work well?

[Los456]

When we do it this year we'll take more pics, I just had a few from last year which I'll dig up and post. As far as ages the older the better as 6 and below have a short attention span. Also because they're all family members or like minded friends, fighting take a central place in our gatherings. I don't have to listen to some absurd parent afraid that their kid will be turned into some kind of mass murder with a gladius.

Right now we're working on two things, gear and swordsmanship. I've got a number of plywood scutums made but we're retrofitting a better handle on them to make them more comfortable to carry and use. or now we've settled on a PVC rutis design that's wrapped in PVC/Pipe insulation and duct tape. The pila are also longer PVC wrapped as the rutis on both ends to prevent injury. Some things there's not much way around. I'm constantly scoping out ebay for those inaccurate but cheap (and sufficient for our purpose) "lobster" tail helmets. I've got four. Armor is a bigger problem as I made two of the loricas I mentioned in a previous post but they take too much effort to make.

As for sword fighting we do it ever weekend at least four of the kids. We're as a sidebar trying to do full contact using Hockey helmets and lacrosse/hockey gear SCA type stuff too. I have a friend coming down from Maine who's daughter does full contact SCA combat in a youth group. The fighting however is separate from roughing it out in the woods on patrol. I'd Like to get them used to moving through dense woods carrying their gear. Toughens them up. I guess that I should add that I'm 25 years army (ret) with one brother in law and one friend involved who are also long service veterans so it does our hearts good to see our kids getting used to being wet and muddy and walking around like pack mules without whining or crying about it, but in fact deriving a sort of perverse pride about it. It helps them with dealing with shucking off little inconveniences of life.

The point of much of this is to give an "experienced it myself" bent to our historical interests. They are learning things like the difficulty of penetrating Pikes, the safety of a shield wall (my kid has figured out pretty much the effective use of the shield boss in 1v1 combat and he's given me a good knock a few times.) They know the difficulties of moving in line vs column over different terrain and they're having a ton of fun while doing it. As I mentioned too we do a fair amount of miniatures gaming so it's fun to make up our own rules based on some of their experiences.

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I know that this last weekend, I was fooling around w/ my Roman kit... My wife had a house full of 10 year old girls and suddenly, they all wanted to try on this stuff, so we let them... took some pix too ;-) ) They got a big kick out of it. "Ooh, it's heavy" big smile at same time... ;-)

Maybe if I get some time, I will post a pix. I look forwar dto hearing more about the Roman Scouts, simply because i'd like to start something like this here... maybe it would keep them off video games and anime ;-)
Best, DMV