"All Britanni stain themselves with vitrum (woad?) which produces a dark blue color, and by this means they have a horrible aspect in battle." Julius Caesar, Gallic Wars, Book V.
There was a time when the inhabitants of what is now England were rather fierce chaps. But the Romans did eventually subdue much of the island, and over the centuries these Celts became as used to the finer things in life as their Roman masters – you know, the baths, the grapes being dropped into their mouths, etc. You get the picture. When the Romans left, these urbane Britons had to hire Anglo-Saxons to fight their battles for them; and we know how that turned out.
Rome of course, left because they too were having some of the same issues. They hired Goth boys to do what Roman boys could not, or would not, do – face off against the Huns. In the end, though, it was not Attila that sacked Rome. It was Alaric… the Goth.
We should keep such things in mind as we go about training our little boys to behave like little girls, and not do what little boys naturally do. For the day may come soon – and it will come – when we will have to ask those boys to secure a beachhead under fire. And on that day, we will be praying that our "training" didn’t take.
David Churchill Barrow is a Massachusetts “Swamp Yankee” descendant of William Bradford and Myles Standish of Pilgrim fame, who grew up on a farm that has not been sold since first built in the early 1700s. In that farmhouse still hangs the commission of James Churchill as a captain in the Massachusetts militia signed by John Hancock, and the sword of Thomas Churchill, a Navy engineer who served in the Blockade of the Confederacy. David’s father, David Bradford Barrow, was a Marine gentleman farmer who commanded a flame-thrower tank in the Battle of Saipan in WW II.
David’s childhood was mostly spent in the woods and swamps of Southeast Massachusetts, building forts and pretending to be Daniel Boone, the Little Drummer Boy of Shiloh, or just an unnamed “Minuteman” making ready to “fire the shot heard round the world.” He has lived and breathed history since first opening his eyes.
He met his wife MaryLu in high school. They were married in 1979 and have three adult children. MaryLu is a former elementary school teacher working on her first children’s book. Today they live just outside Tampa, Florida, with their Berger Blanc Suisse Attila and their two cats, Minnie and Tink.
David has written non-fiction historical pieces and columns for The Tampa Tribune (now the Tampa Bay Times), The Marine Corps Gazette and the “Lore of the Corps” section of The Marine Corps Times. He has been a regular contributor of both short stories and posts to Liberty Island Magazine since its inception. He and MaryLu co-authored Silver and Lead and are working together on a YA novel centered around the so-called “Boston Massacre.”
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