For some reason I forgot to post the blog below in early July. So mentally backdate and have a laugh at the photos...The tv-show (in Dutch and quite a bit outdated in its historical research) has been broadcast by now as well (last item of the show).

I'm involved in the organisation of a reenactment event here in Nijmegen in late August. This event has various aspects, which make it different from others. One of those is that we'll try to have some irregular Batavian reenactors.

For that purpose Robert Wimmers, driving force behind Novio Locus slaved through this Winter to provide us with spears, javelins, shields and the 'modified' Batavian helmet as was found in Kessel-Lith in the Netherlands (kit inspired by the article by Adrian Wink in Ancient Warfare I.1). I had heard, but not seen anything of Robert's work, but last Friday provided an opportunity. Robert was to join Corbvlo for a tv-shoot 'Willem Wever', a Dutch tv show where kids can mail in their questions. The subject of this episode was the Batavian Revolt of 69 AD (I'm amazed, I sure didn't ask questions about Batavians when I was in Primary school...sounds like a future reader of Ancient Warfare). Needless to say, the combo of an 'equipment inspection' and tv recording piqued my curiosity and took myself off to HOME.

Little did I know that after about half an hour of taking photos of the shoot, the director announced they were lacking a Batavian for a certain scene. I was enlisted after some token protest and very glad that I only have a minimal prescription for my glasses. I can see pretty decently without them. Having acted the uncooperative Batavian recruit wearing a tunic over my modern clothing (they were filming only medium and close shots), I was then told to gear up and form up with Gerard Schotgerrits playing Civilis. We crashed into the Romans (and the ground, without too much damage to any of us) and mostly had a good time.

Having never reenacted before, I'll admit it was a fun experience. I hadn't planned on doing it for the festival, but the local media compensated for that, plastering my photo all over their pages.
Batavian for a day only...yeah, right.