Ermine Street Guard

[jim haile]

Hi all,
just a general question here..quite a few years ago, around the 90s i guess, i was a member of WW11 Living History Association, i recall several Armies Through The Ages events where i met, and greatly admired, legionares from the "ermine street guard". Looking back it must have seemed rather strange for members of the public to see a couple of German Paratroopers sitting down with an optio and centurian around their campfire drinking schnapps....
Anyway, i was just wondering if the guard were still around, maybe some of you guys could let me know, as i would like to renew my aquaintence.

many thanks
Jim Haile

[jvrjenivs]

Sure they are still alive and active
http://erminestreetguard.co.uk/

[jim haile]

Oh great, many thanks for the link too

Jim Haile

[D B Campbell]

Anyway, i was just wondering if the guard were still around,

Proof over on this thread!

[jim haile]

thanks Duncan

[Graham Sumner]

Hi Jim

I was in the ESG for nearly 20 years and attended the two Battle Abbey multi-period events and all the Kirby Hall shows. We probably met. I will dig out some of the photos I took during those times and post them here. You may be on them or know other people.

Graham.

[jim haile]

Hi Graham, It was probably Kirby Hall im thinking, actually your name sounds very familiar.
look forward to seeing the photos.
I think one of the Kirby shows was maybe the first time the leather tent was used, very impressive.
Cheers
Jim

[P Sertorius Scaevola]

Hi Jim,

I may well have been amongst the German paratroops back then and actually was and am a member of the Guard and the Dutch Gemina Project. The paras may well have been the former FJR6. I have a''massive' Kirby Hall'thru the years photo album displaying pics of both e the Fallschirmjäger and the Roman legionaries. If you would like to have some of those pics, let me know.

[jim haile]

Hi Paul,
Yes i was a Fw in FJR6, Andy Clark was our Co at the time, and Tom Gulliver our Ofw.perhaps you knew them?
Thankyou for the kind offer of some photos, they would be most welcome as most of my own were lost to water damage when the house got flooded.

Many thanks
Jim

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Jim
I was in the ESG for nearly 20 years and attended the two Battle Abbey multi-period events and all the Kirby Hall shows. We probably met. I will dig out some of the photos I took during those times and post them here. You may be on them or know other people.
Graham.

Images from Graham, posted at his request:

[Robert Vermaat]

And some more:

[Robert Vermaat]

And finally these:

[Crispvs]

Graham, you are a far better photographer than me!

Jim,

It may not just have been legionaries from the Ermine Street Guard you met at Kirby. No Roman group, including the Guard, can put enough men on the field to achieve what we used to refer to as the 'Big Block' of Roman soldiers seen at Kirby so a number of groups were always present but acting together to give the impression of a single unit. To that end we all had to carry red shields (which, as ours are blue, meant we borrowed spare Guard shields) so unless you were familiar with the different blazons used by the different groups, it would have been easy to think you were looking at a single large group rather than men from as many as seven separate groups all carrying shields with the same colour field, especially as the announcers speaking over the P.A. normally seemed to forget that more than just the Guard was present and so did not mention the others. In all probability, thirty to forty of the men you saw would have been from the Guard, about a dozen from Gemina Project, fifteen to twenty five from the RMRS and smaller numbers from the Antonine Guard, possibly the Northguard, and the Colchester Roman Society, and maybe one or two I may have forgotten. The only major British group who would not have been represented there would have been Leg II Augusta. The different groups would have been more obvious amongst the auxilia though, as English Heritage made no requirement for them to carry the same colour shields and so their shield colours were more varied.

That said, although being ignored by the commentators did rankle at times, it must be acknowledged that if the Ermine Street Guard had not been set up in the first place by Chris Haines et al and then set the example it did, then there may well have been no Roman re-enactment as we know it and perhaps no other groups to be a member of anyway. To that end, I believe Chris deserved his MBE.

Crispvs

[Graham Sumner]

Thanks Robert and Paul

I have a few more pictures from those days if anyone is interested in seeing them.

Many of my pictures then were taken for painting projects. For example the photo of Marc Sanders from the Gemina Project dressed as a Dutch WW2 officer was actually posing for a painting I did for 'Military Illustrated' magazine, showing a pilot officer from the Condor Legion!

Graham.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Interesting photos.
I've just started collecting WW2 German kit.
It's a facinating and terrible part of our recent past.
It was only over more recently when I was born that many of the younger members on here have seen go by. I recall how it still affected everyone of the adults I knew.