Shield-stretchers

[Lost_Warrior]

In Greece (and several other places) the soldiers would carry their dead and wounded home on their shields. ("come home WITH your sheild, or ON it."). However this confuses me when it comes to the Greeks, because they had round shields. How did the men fit? It must have been a very uncomfortable ride...and it seems terribly impractical.

[Lacertus]

It is a Spartan vivid expression only. The soldier can bring his sheild himself if hi is alive. I think it could be if some soldiers brought one of died companion on their shields.

[longbow]

I think it means you can bring your shield home if your alive still or you'll be carried home on it if you died in the battle.

[Primus Pilus]

And it was disgraceful to return home without your shield, if you survived. The shield was more important in the phalanx system than the man carrying it. If you lost your shield, you could no longer fill in the shield wall and therefore left your fellow soldiers exposed.

[Lost_Warrior]

Yea I know (in Sparta they believed that if you didn't come home with your sheild, you must have fled and they basically were outcast from society, just short of exile).

 

I'm asking how they managed to carry the person on the shield. I mean, with a round sheild especially, it seems very difficult, almost impossible. Highly impractical at best.

[Pertinax]

I can only imagine that you use two spears as stretcher arms with shield lashed between-this is one of those areas where practical work is needed-you would imagine it would be seriously tough work even with an elongated shield.

[Lost_Warrior]

I suppose. I guess it's also possible that people were smaller in those days...and could fit on the shield better

[Pertinax]

this is an interesting strand because it poses quite a few questions -namely (1) who carried the injured off the battlefield (2) who looked after them and for how long,in the field and (3) who transported them and how. These are big logistical problems for early armies without fast /heavy transport capabilities and they impact on fatalities heavily as well. If we accept that a lot of modern day contact is designed to maim and thus impede combat capability by requiring either combatants or medics to tend to the injured or at least "be distracted " by them what was ancient combat aimed at ? total destruction of opposing forces that could not be kept in the field for long?

[Lost_Warrior]

Hmm...perhaps they simply stepped on/over those who could not get up or drag themselves off the field untill the battle was over. Or maybe they took a break from fighting (both sides) to get food and water, and to care for their dead and wounded. Actually, it seems likely that at some point in history, both scenarios occurred, though the whens and wheres remains a mystery, to me at least.

[Pertinax]

history of war

 

The link above is food for thought -the table is rather crude but gives an indication of how many bodies were in close proximity in combat and how alien ancient battlefields are to us in combat appreciation. I think Lost Warrior may be proved right in his statement-sheer numbers might get you trampled in an "ancient" army and anyone whos boxed , fenced or played hard contact sports knows even the toughest have a time limit on strength and adrenaline. A truce seems a logical and honourable method of casualty extraction

[Sextus Roscius]

perhaps they made a strange adaptation on the testuedo formation with round sheilds, I'm sure you could carry bodies on that,

 

or maybe they refer to a man coming in the door holding his shield, but becuase he is dead, he falls over and topples on it... just a thought.

 

Oh well, its fun to take things litteraly for once.