After Action Report

April 14-15, 2760 AUC

Name: Marivs Minivs Donatvs

Rank: Optio Centvriae, Legio VI F, Cohors I

On April 14-15 in the year 2760 AUC an event was held at the Camden Revolutionary war site in Camden, South Carolina. It was a military timeline with periods from Roman, Viking, 13^th century picts, Rev war (American and British), Civil war (with buffalo soldiers), WWI, WWII (Allies and Axis), Korea, Vietnam, Russian, and SC state guard.  This was just to be a small event for us to dress up and relax. 

On April 13 I left work early to around 1500 hrs so that I would get there in time to help set up camp and get to see the place before it got busy, not to mention beat traffic in Columbia.  When I arrived on site I was amazed to see that the rest of the legion had already arrived.  We had only three members showing at this event, our centurion and his son Jonathan, a new member, Stacey, at his first event, and myself.  Stacey had brought his son along and we had a friend of Stacey come too that was going to be doing Vietnam era named Rick. 

We made quick work of the tents, especially sense we only had to put up the centurion tents and one trooper tent.  We got some of the Rev war guys to help us out and Rick was a big up too!  After that we cleaned up the site a little and put our stuff out getting ready for tomorrow.  I quickly changed into my roman gear and walked around a bit.  I also showed off my new Find-it Armory 8mm chain mail shirt.  Stacey was very impressed as well as the Viking!  Rusty showed off some of his new gear which included a clay cooking pot from Venetian Cat, and a terracotta canteen from Armillium.

That night we had some lentil stew with onions and ham, boy was it good!  To snack on we had pita bread with humus, olive oil, cheese spread (my favorite, Thanks Rusty!), and for dessert dates, no not fresh but still good!  We also had blackberry wine to drink and that was good!

On April 14 we all woke up early, a little too early to tell the truth.  We had Italian sausage for breakfast which was always good.  The event didn’t kick off for a couple of hours so we took our time until we found out that the officers had to attend a meeting about the event.  So me and Rusty quickly got kitted out and headed over to the meeting.  We were the first to arrive, but when everyone finally arrived I could not help but notice that everyone was looking at us.  The officials for the event told us that there were going to be judges through out the day and they were not going to be identifying themselves, and the staff was going to be in these bright green shirts.  They were so bright that if were any hotter at the event they would have burst in flames!!

After the meeting the centurion returned to our camp and I went out and talked to everyone and just looked around at what they had.  There were three vendors that came, selling a lot of interesting stuff, mostly for Rev war and Civil war, just in case you lost a button for forgot something small at home.  I also found out that two of the vendors were traveling men so I had a nice little talk with them. 

After a while the centurion showed up with Stacey and we walked up to one of the rampart forts.  We took some pictures and talked about how we could use it next year.  On the way back to camp I stopped at the WWII German camp and was very impressed that he had an authentic mg 42!  There were only two of them, and older man that didn’t have much to stay and a younger, about my age, that was very helpful.  I then stopped at the Pirate camp.  When I read that their was going to be a pirate camp I thought great a bunch of drunken idiots that are going to try and steal stuff.  Well, I was wrong, I think?  They were very friendly, they even had a little functional cannon.  They had a lot of questions, as did I, so we hung out for a while.  I found out that most of them are around Florida, Alabama, and lower Georgia.  After a while it was getting late and I noticed that people were coming to look at the camps so I headed back to camp.

There were a lot of people of all ages!  Our camp was right in behind the check out table and people wasted no time heading straight towards us.  I guess in a timeline we were the oldest culture there but the Vikings, and the 13^th century pict was camped out in front of us but that didn’t stop most people from coming to us first. 

We had the usual questions of what is this or what is that, what to the feathers mean, why is his armor different, is this authentic, in gladiator they had this, it was all good.  After a while I usually get bored with questions like that but it wasn’t bad.  We even had a couple of Italian immigrants come up to us and tell us that they were modern descendants of the Romans, they were fun to talk to because they told us about how they grew up with seeing Roman ruins. 

At one point we saw some of the other groups marching around and showing off, which was cool.  Unfortunately, we only had three legionaries so we could not do much of anything.  The Vietnam guys were walking marching around like on patrol, which was very cool.  One of the guys lost his balance and fell, I could not help but laugh.  Later on they walked by again and stop by us to ask question and I told them I saw one of the guys fall, at that point the guy I was talking to turned to the guy that fell earlier and said, “see I told ya, and you said no one saw you fall!”

It got to be around lunch time and people were still coming and asking questions.  We had ham cooked over the fire, well kind of, and left over pita and spreads.  It was a good meal but it was kind of annoying that people were still asking questions during out lunch time. 

Shortly after lunch my armor was starting to get very, very heavy.  I also realized that with the segmentata when you sit down you can take the weight off of your shoulders for a time but with the chain mail be so flexible the pressure can not be relieved.  We all decided to take off our armor, that is when a problem arose.  Before the event I made a subarmalis out of leather and I didn’t try it on with the armor before the event.  We almost had to cut the armor off of me.  I got down on my hands and knees and did the Dan Peterson shake.  Me and the centurion had laughed for a good minute over it. 

Later that afternoon the weather started getting bad and the staff was constantly looking that the weather channel and listen to a local radio station for updates.  When the news finally came down, we had the option of packing camp but could wait out the storm.  One of the judges even told us that the judges must have liked us because we did very good.  We then preceded to ask the staff if we could use the rampart fort next year, telling them if we remove our flags you can’t tell if it is a Roman fort or a Rev war fort.  They seemed to be convinced so we will see next year. 

We all decided to pack up camp and head on home.  It was a good thing too because as soon as we started packing the wind picked up real bad!  When we started loaded things up on the trailer we realized that we had misplaced or lost our tarp.  So we decided to use the big ground cloth for the centurion tent and hope that it makes it home in one piece!

On the way out we stopped at a nice little restaurant to have a good meal before we left.  It was a Fatz café and it was pretty good.  I haven’t eaten at one seen they have been going out of the upstate but it was still good.  I had a steak and baked potato which most of us had except for the kids.  Stacey’s little boy didn’t eat much especially after he got sick from eating nothing but junk food all weekend long and Jonathan had a burger. 

On the way home I ran into some rain especially right outside of Greenville. I finally arrived home at 1900 hrs and I immediately took a shower and went to bed. 

There is my report for the event in Camden, South Carolina.