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Large-Scale Disappearances: Armies / Military Units

harlequin2005

harlequin2005

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 3, 2001
Messages
826
Didn't one of the Norfolk Regiments vanish in WW1?
No bodies found, no prisoners taken sort of thing...
8¬)
 
The First-Fifth Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment it was apparently. The bodies of only around half were found. There was a report of them being swallowed up by a cloud which sounds a bit dodgy (getting the name of the battalion and the date wrong).
 
I think there was a Roman Legion that vanished completely in Scotland - the 9th Legion? Probably massacred by locals, but it must have been a Custer's last stand situation.
 
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August Verango said:
The First-Fifth Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment it was apparently. The bodies of only around half were found. There was a report of them being swallowed up by a cloud which sounds a bit dodgy (getting the name of the battalion and the date wrong).
Click to expand...
That report was the basis of 'All the King's Men', which was quite good, but had them finding all the bodies, which I don't remember them doing. Mind you, a battalion is a lot of men to just vanish, but then a 425' freighter with a couple hundred tonnes of sulfur and 39 men on board shouldn't vanish, but it did.

The 9th (Hispania) Legion? Yeah, we got 'em.
 
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Big_Al said:
I think there was a Roman Legion that vanished completely in Scotland - the 9th Legion? Probably massacred by locals, but it must have been a Custer's last stand situation
Click to expand...

Is that the same "lost legion" which was thought to have appeared in the printer's cellar in York? (V. famous 'true' ghost story)
 
Legio IX Hispana didn't vanish in Caledonia they are last formally recorded in Albion at York rebuilding the legionary fortress. There is certainly evidence of them existing as a military entity after leaving Albion see this site for details.
 
intaglio said:
Legio IX Hispana didn't vanish in Caledonia they are last formally recorded in Albion at York rebuilding the legionary fortress. There is certainly evidence of them existing as a military entity after leaving Albion see this site for details.
Click to expand...
I didn't want to bring that up. Rather spoils the fun, don't you think? Hmmm. Not very Fortean of me, was it?
 
Just noticed a thread on the snopes board about the 3,000 Chinese army troops that supposedly vanished overnight in 1939 in Nanking...not much info there so far. Which got me to thinking about some of the disappearing army threads in the old strange but true books of the 60's and 70's. Another story is the 4,000 or so french troops who vanished crossing the Pyrenees in the 1700's.
My question is...Is there any truth to any of these stories ..or are they just UL's....they are fascinating stories (if true).
 
Poor old Cambyses lost an army when he tried to cross the Egyptian desert to conquer Kush, wherever that was.

This was in about 525BC I think.
 
And never a man came back from Varus' foray into the Teutoberger Wald...

well some of them did, but not many;

Custer lost all his lot as well, but the historians at the Little Big Horn have found the spot where each man fell, or so they reckon.
 
There's the story of the Ninth Legion.

117A.D.- The Ninth Legion, stationed at Eburacum (where York now stands), marched north to deal with an uprising amongst the Caledonian tribes, it was never heard of again.

IIRC some people say that the men of the Legion were assimilated into the local tribes and also intermarried, but there is no concrete evidence as to say what really happened to them.

Rosemary Sutcliff wrote 'The Eagle of the Ninth' a fictional take on the tale in 1954.
 
Eburacum45 said:
Poor old Cambyses lost an army when he tried to cross the Egyptian desert to conquer Kush, wherever that was.

This was in about 525BC I think.
Click to expand...

The Kush was a kingdom in Nubia surrounding the mountains and Nile to the south of the Third Cataract. It was considered by the Egyptians to be a hard place to conquer and rule but worth it for the mineral wealth it held. The Egyptians founded two fortress-cities at Semna and Buhen to control the Nubian/Kush trade on the Nile and also act as outpost garrisons to the Egyptian army and the Medjen or desert police militia.

"Yea, verily, was great Cambyses pissed off for loosing his army for did this not demonstrate the power of the desert can defeat mighty armies just because they didn't have factor 30 sun-screen and four-wheel drives!"
Anonymous commentator from Gallifrey
 
Quixote said:
IIRC some people say that the men of the Legion were assimilated into the local tribes and also intermarried, but there is no concrete evidence as to say what really happened to them.
Click to expand...

Also some rumours at the time, when the Roman empire was retreating from it's furthest colonies during the civil war threat, were that the entire Ninth had mutinied against it's Legate, swiped it's warchests (containing booty, pay etc.) and split up, some hiding out on Isle of Man.
 
Thank you, stu

There really does need to be a Snopes type site for historical misapprehensions.
 
Quixote said:
There's the story of the Ninth Legion.

117A.D.- The Ninth Legion, stationed at Eburacum (where York now stands), marched north to deal with an uprising amongst the Caledonian tribes, it was never heard of again.

IIRC some people say that the men of the Legion were assimilated into the local tribes and also intermarried, but there is no concrete evidence as to say what really happened to them.

Rosemary Sutcliff wrote 'The Eagle of the Ninth' a fictional take on the tale in 1954.
Click to expand...

Ok fair enough, I've just read the link Stu's posted. Ninth Legion etc. seems to be a romantic myth. Teaches me to search the message board before posting again! :rolleyes:
But seriously, I found that thread really informative, certainly changed my opinion in that I was always lead to believe it was based on a fact,
cheers Intaglio!:)
although I still like the books by Rosemary Sutcliff :p
 
Perhaps many legends of "disappearing armies" are, in fact, ancient cover-ups by the authorities to explain mutinies, complete military blunders or even "creative accounting" in the Pay Corps, in times before more accurate records were preserved or demanded.

I couldn't see the Roman military wanting to admit they'd "lost" a whole legion to a bunch of savages, by either combat or intermarriage - especially at a time when they needed all the civilian support they could get!
 
To go back to the original post, I haven't been able to find any info on those events; does anyone have any more detail?
 
Cambyses

Picked up this from a Google

He ruled the Persian Empire from the death of his father in 530 to his own death in Ecbatane (Syria) in 522 while on his way back from Egypt with his army (my emphasis)

The link is here

The French getting lost in the Pyrenees and the Chinese vanishing round Nanking I found nothing

But 1937 - 38 was the period of the infamous
"Rape of Nanking" (click to link). More than an army vanished during this period
 
Are these the bones of a legendary Persian army lost in the Sahara 2,500 years ago?
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:16 PM on 10th November 2009

The remains of a legendary 50,000-strong army which was swallowed up in a cataclysmic sandstorm in the Sahara Desert 2,500 years ago are believed to have been found.
Italian archaeologists Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, twin brothers, have discovered bronze weapons and hundreds of human bones which they reckon are the remains of the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BC), Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent the soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa in 525BC.
Their mission was to destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun after the priests there refused to legitimise his claim to Egypt.
Oracles were places where divine advice or prophecy was sought and the ancient Egyptians held them to be manifestations of the gods that could see into the future. They were often consulted before big decisions.

Two centuries after the soldiers disappeared, Alexander the Great made his own pilgrimage there in 332BC before he began his conquest of Persia. His historians claimed that the oracle then confirmed he was the divine son of Zeus, the Greek god equated with Amun, and the legitimate pharaoh of Egypt.

Because of the lack of any archaeological evidence historians had come to dismiss the tale of Cambyses' lost army as legend.
Among those to have searched for the army is Count László Almásy (on whom the novel The English Patient was based).

After walking for seven days in the desert, the army was said to have arrived at an 'oasis', which historians believe was El-Kharga, 120 miles west of the Nile in the Libyan Desert. After they left, a great sandstorm sprung up and they were never seen again.
Herodotus (484-425BC) wrote 'a wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear'.
Dario Del Bufalo, a member of the Castiglioni expedition from the University of Lecce in Italy, told Discovery News: ‘We have found the first archaeological evidence of a story reported by the Greek historian Herodotus.’

The Castiglioni brothers are already famous for their discovery 20 years ago of the city of pharaohs the 'city of gold' Berenike Panchrysos which was quoted by Pliny the Elder in his 'Naturalis Historia'.
Alfredo Castiglioni told Discovery News that the discovery was the result of 13 years of research and five expeditions to the desert.
While working close to Siwa the team of researchers noticed a half-buried pot and some human remains.

Then the brothers spotted a rock 114ft long and 6ft in height which could have been used as a shelter by the army. Such rock formations occur in the desert, but this was the only one in a large area.
'Its size and shape made it the perfect refuge in a sandstorm,' Mr Castiglioni said.
It was there that a bronze dagger and several arrow tips were found.
'We are talking of small items, but they are extremely important as they are the first Achaemenid objects, thus dating to Cambyses' time, which have emerged from the desert sands in a location quite close to Siwa.'

The brothers studied ancient maps and came to the conclusion that the army did not take the caravan route most archaeologists believe they used.
'Since the 19th century, many archaeologists and explorers have searched for the lost army along that route. They found nothing. We hypothesised a different itinerary, coming from south,' added Mr Castiglioni.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0WSlKAqIS
 
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