"All of which gets me to the next point. Each cohort needs scouts specially trained in forest skills, to move without being detected, and to kill any of the opposition that it comes into contact with. I want each of you to find men who have had experience in forests who would be willing to learn these skills. Right, we start again tomorrow morning. Same exercises, same people! Hopefully, better performances!
The somewhat anxious scouts from the ninth turned up and explained what they had done, which was basically to cross the previous evening, do a basic search of the closer forest in the moonlight, then, at sunrise, they did a deeper forest search, all the time trying to remain out of sight. In that they were successful, for Gaius' observers had completely missed them. Gaius congratulated them, then told them that things would get harder, but he expected them also to become harder to find.
* * *
Exercises were carried out for the next few days without revision meetings, as Gaius wanted to see who would take the hints and improve. As expected, some units performed better than others, however it was also clear that some cohorts had been kept in better order than others. Four of the poorer cohorts had two Tribunes who appeared to be out of their depth, so Gaius made an effort to find out why. The answer for one was quite simply he had never commanded at this level before, while the other one was having difficulty in imposing discipline. Gaius decide to personally help the first one, in the hope he could teach him enough, and for the second he gave him the services of the Prime Centurion he had brought with him, together with a very generous supply of canes.
The news that the legion would take part in an invasion did, however, lead to an increase in morale. Marching around, digging ditches and getting soaked in winter streams was simply tedious; however taking part in a conquest was another matter. That they might lose never occurred to the soldiers.
Despite Gaius' best efforts, progress was slow because this legion was strongly traditional. They fought with the marching camp, which effectively meant they fought with mobile fortifications. From a defensive point of view, this was sound, and on open ground it appeared to be unbeatable, but it was known that Britain had many forests and much of what was termed open ground was either small or littered with hedges, trees, or other obstructions. From Gaius' point of view, they had to find an alternative to relying on fortifications when giving battle, and there had to be a defence to possible hit and run tactics. Traditionally, the Roman soldier had to accept that sometimes they would fight in forests, and they would do their best, but that often left them at a disadvantage. The big shields and heavy armour greatly reduced mobility and agility in dense shrubbery, and if men became separated they became vulnerable because it was difficult to avoid forming gaps between men if the men continually had to go around trees. The forest exercises were designed to overcome this, but many of the officers seemed reluctant to take advice. The only way around this appeared to be by demonstration; one squad would be under the control of the men he had brought from the XIth, and they would have to humiliate some of the others.
Another issue that disturbed him, although it had not surprised him, was that the cavalry had been doing very little. It was true that, with the exception of a very few more inspired commanders such as Julius, the Roman army generally made little use of cavalry as a primary strike weapon, and even later clean-up operations were frequently carried out with little enthusiasm. That would change. Just because they were not used to being handled this way did not mean they would not learn. Gaius made it very clear that "we don't do it that way" was not an acceptable excuse, and he had better not hear it again.
The standard use for the cavalry was to clean up those fleeing following a victory, and while this was important, there were obvious alternative uses. This was particularly the case for lightly forested areas, where it was still difficult to form solid lines and manoeuvre those formations. This usually led to small groups fighting, or even man on man. Under such circumstances, victory was not a given, and even if the Romans did win there was plenty of scope for an enemy to escape, provided they were given time to put some distance between themselves and the victors. On the other hand, if the Romans could not form solid lines, neither could the enemy, and in such circumstances cavalry should be ideal for picking off fragmented groups of soldiers, as long as there was enough room for the horses to move with reasonable speed between trees. Finally, there was an important point about strategy: everything that could do damage to the enemy had value in combat and should contribute to victory if the commander could find the right way to use it. One of the most important aspects of battle was to do something the enemy did not expect. If everybody thought that the Romans did not use cavalry as a strike weapon, then there was a ready-made surprise. Accordingly, the cavalry units would drill, and one important lesson to learn before any battle was the limiting density of trees that made cavalry less effective. It was absolutely imperative that the cavalry commanders knew what they could do on any terrain; learning that at the hands of the enemy was simply a waste of lives.
The next issue was field strategy. Suppose the opposition approached as one unit in reasonably open terrain where they could form a line? One possible response was to move two or three cohorts so as to attempt to flank the enemy. Either the opposition split to send some forces to follow the fragment or they did not. If they did, a hole would develop momentarily that could be attacked by cavalry. If they did not the flanking manoeuvre would succeed. Certainly the opposition could move men to continually face the flanking movement, and in principle they could fill the gap, while at the same time thinning their lines, however that required discipline and practice. Then, if they did that, a concentrated punch at the weakest spot would often split and rout them. The side taking the initiative invariably had an advantage over those content to defend.
Alternatively, the main force could split on the left to go around the enemy's rear from the other direction, while the remaining two groups could drive into the extended enemy. If the opposition split to follow the first flanking manoeuvre, they could be tempted, with poor discipline, to form extended lines as the front attempted to get ahead of the rest. Alternatively, they would be a small group, open to attack from several directions from a more mobile force. Either way would open possibilities for cavalry attack. He would design exercises.
Accordingly, there were a number of exercises in which the first cohort moved in ways that it should not and the cavalry was supposed to do something about it. Further, on the basis that it might be necessary for the cavalry to respond promptly to such opportunities, some of these opportunities were designed deliberately to be fleeting. The results of these exercises were poor initially, since the commanders tended to be too cautious. They could see that what the infantry was doing was wrong but they did not see such 'errors' as easily approached opportunities. They were not assisted by the fact that they knew that some manoeuvres were deliberately set as traps for cavalry, for Gaius did not want commanders that simply fell into the first trap.