On Writing on the battle of Zama - the most decisive battle of the Second Punic War and why losing sucks

The battle of Zama, fought in North Africa around 202 BC, was the defining battle of the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) – it ended the war leaving Carthage defeated and destitute because of egregious Roman war reparation. Hannibal and his mostly inexperienced and undertrained army was defeated by a well-drilled Roman army under Scipio, along with large numbers of local Numidian horsemen seeking independence from Carthage, who proved crucial toward the end of the battle. I suggested that the Numidians may very well have been the reason Rome won the battle. But the battle was a close-run thing and could have been won by Hannibal were it not for the timely arrival of the Roman allied Numidian horsemen in the back of Hannibal’s last and most experienced veteran line. The Romans nearly broke again to the genius of the great Carthaginian. But alas not this time. The Roman war machine marched on for centuries… 

I had stopped writing books around 2008 or 2009 and focused on scripts… there were some mild successes but nothing that garnered a sale or an agent – no surprise there. My wife in the meanwhile started her career and excelled at it, allowing me the luxury to return to non-fiction writing. 

Around 2015, I approached Marcus Cowper who had returned to Osprey Publishing and he approved a Campaign Series book on Zama – that was my first book after about six to seven years. Nikolai Bogdanovic was my editor and it was a happy reunion – at least for me – ha! Marcus also picked the magnificent artist Peter Dennis to illustrate the book with three amazing color plates spread throughout https://peterspaperboys.com/pages/about . Zama became a 96-page monograph with about 40K words of original work and rewrites – Nikolai did a fine job and it ended with around 31-33K words for the final text.

The great little book I wrote in 2016 COpyright: Osprey Publishing

Additionally, I had to secure image rights and present Peter Dennis all the art references – although he really did not need them since he is a world class military artist - but importantly, I had to articulate what I wanted the paintings to show. I was so happy with Peter’s work that I asked my wife to buy all three originals which now adorn my small office. They are great. I stare at them daily, imaging, perhaps even reliving, the great tragedy unfolding in those lovely three prints. The fear, the sweat, toil, blood and horror of ancient butchery – man-on-man… the killing and maiming of elephants and horses… terrible to ponder really.

I am including the image of the opening sequence of the battle, the Carthaginian far right looking at the far left Roman line, in which young and untrained Carthaginian elephants (one of the greatest cruelties inflicted by man on animal) are turned back onto their own lines. Significantly, it shows the Roman lines forming tunnels, instead of checkerboard pattern always associated with Republican Legions, to make the elephants run through a gauntlet of Roman troops intend on killing them, thereby negating a possible collision with the small-sized elephants. 

Additionally, I had to secure image rights and present Peter Dennis all the art references – although he really did not need them since he is a world class military artist - but importantly, I had to articulate what I wanted the paintings to show. I was so happy with Peter’s work that I asked my wife to buy all three originals which now adorn my small office. They are great. I stare at them daily, imaging, perhaps even reliving, the great tragedy unfolding in those three prints. The fear, the sweat, toil, blood and horror of ancient butchery – man-on-man… the killing and maiming of elephants and horses… terrible to ponder really.

I am including the image of the opening sequence of the battle, the Carthaginian far right looking at the far left Roman line, in which young and untrained Carthaginian elephants (one of the greatest cruelties inflicted by man on animal) are turned back onto their own lines. Significantly, it shows the Roman lines forming tunnels, instead of checkerboard pattern always associated with Republican Legions, to force the elephants through a gauntlet of Roman light troops intend on killing them, thereby negating collisions with the small elephants. 

Opening of the battle. Copyright: Osprey Publishing Artist: Peter Dennis

The North African forest elephant was rather small actually but is often shown as one of those great Indian elephants carrying towers on their backs. Arguably the greatest (and saddest) scene ever in film is captured in Oliver Stone’s Alexander – an incredible, and coincidental simultaneous rearing of Alexander’s horse and the Indian King Porus’s elephant. I believe the Indian elephant used in the film was killed by a poacher a few years ago. Typical.

The image shows the four distinct Roman units – velites (light skirmishers) who usually initiate battle but are in this case retreating and reforming along the backs of the now front-rank line troops called hastati (meaning spearmen even though they use pila) as they harass, capture or kill the elephants through the tunnels.  Behind the hastati are more seasoned troops named principes, and the final line is composed of veteran and heavily armored troops, the triarii, armed with long, classical spears instead of pila. These four types composed the manipular legion. A maniple is a tactical unit. Each legion was, on paper, composed of 1,200 men each except for the last line of veterans who were half that size. Roman cavalry was virtually non-existent, about 300 per legion, hence the crucial need to ally with the greatest horsemen of their time the Numidian light cavalry. Peter Dennis captures the moment when the Roman and allied cavalry will exploit the elephants turning into their own cavalry and foot. We see just the beginning of it. Despite this early set back the Romans were almost annihilated by Hannibal’s three lines facing Scipio’s army. 

Another point of note is that in my opinion and as depicted here - and there is no proof of how the maniples actually deployed forward into battle other than the checkerboard pattern before battle ensued, called the triple acies – the Romans are deploying forward and outward from a maniple formation to fill in the gaps between each maniple in a fan-like manner. Kind of like from a fist (the maniple) to a spread-out hand with the front growing in width with each maniple covering half of the gap between the standard deployment of the maniples. 

There were three great wars. Ultimately Rome prevailed and ‘canceled’ out the great culture and civilization of Carthage. Something like 50,000 survivors out of maybe 250,000-300,000 were sold into slavery, the rest killed and the city of Carthage was laid to waste – a Roman city was built in its stead.

Overall, I think Zama turned out to be a great little book on the decisive battle of the Second Punic War. Buy the book it is a very good primer on the conflict and provides a detailed account of the armies and battle - and no I do not make royalties from it - work-for-hire. So it is not a shameless plug – this time. https://ospreypublishing.com/zama-202-bc

Algerian artist Hocine Ziani’s magnificent painting of a Numidian cavalryman captures the essence of the ancient North African horsemen. I originally believed this to have been a representation of Hannibal but Hocine clarified that it was indeed a Numidian horseman. For more wonderful art see his website https://www.ziani.eu/en-gb/galerie Copyright: Hocine Ziani

On Writing - or how the no-bullshit book Run to the Sound of the Guns came about

How did you meet? (From 2018)

Mir:  My great friend and Hollywood actor Tim Abell (2nd Ranger Battalion) made the introduction to Nicholas Moore on August 20, 2015 – over three years ago! Nicholas served in the 2nd Ranger Battalion, as did I. So it’s kind of like the three Rangerteers, or maybe like the three blind mice. In any event, I was looking at getting back into writing after a hiatus of about seven years. I also found out that Marcus Cowper was back at Osprey and I proposed a Campaign Series book, Zama 202 BC (2016), which helped me transition to the far more difficult writing required for Run to the Sound of the Guns.

Nicholas:  Like Mir said, this whole thing came about from our friend Tim Abell over three years ago. Tim asked me if I would be willing to talk to Mir (who is a published author), saying “I think you really have a story that people will want to read,” to which I said yes, then I googled Mir. We talked a few times, but honestly, I wasn’t really sure if we could actually get anyone to bite on this.

I vacillated about doing this at all; it was with the support of my wife that I really committed to wanting to tell this story.

I did stress to Mir that although profanity was used through the course of my career, if we had to write it into the book to make it “good,” we probably shouldn’t write it, because I feel that it is overused in military books, which makes me not want to read them. We also discussed how to approach the book so as to not make me out to be the “greatest thing since sliced bread,” which I am not, but I wanted to highlight the achievements of everyone, and it takes everyone for the unit to function at the level that it does.

What is the book about?

Mir:  Nicholas and I talked for a while about his background and experiences on the leading edge of the Global War on Terrorism. We needed a good story – something important and different to the typical chest-thumping, back-slapping books that have inundated the marketplace and Hollywood. And I needed a good guy who honored his word. Both of these triggers were met.

Although the perspective is Nicholas’s, it is about the Rangers who helped transform the 75th Ranger Regiment from the best elite light infantry unit in the world to a unit capable of executing the same special missions as the top Army and Navy special mission units. In a nutshell, it is the story of the change from the founding doctrine of the 75th Infantry (Ranger), the Abrams Charter (1974), which required experienced Rangers to leave the unit and spread their expertise throughout the regular army, to a flexible, ever-evolving special missions unit of the 75th Ranger Regiment where Rangers could actually serve their entire career. This transition happened quickly over a few years after 9/11 and it is evident throughout the book as we see Rangers conducting strenuous training exercise, then combat deployments, and adapting to new requirements in the ever-changing fields of battle. The strength of Run to the Sound of the Guns comes from this. It is not one of those one-battle or one-deployment books that are typically packed with mostly biographical filler. For us, it was important to show the true life of Rangering from training to combat, and we therefore cut all biographical material. In fact, we probably could have or maybe even should have expounded on some of the engagements, because there is so much present in Nick’s career from private to platoon sergeant.

Nicholas:  This is about my career as a US Army Ranger, and about the Rangers I had the honor to serve with. I had the privilege to serve in 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment before the events of September 11 and through to its initial deployments into Afghanistan and Iraq. To be a part of the Regiment’s transformation from its initial charter to an agile and elite Special Operations strike force. Although, at the time, during all of this transformation, we were not thinking of that, but just of how we could adapt to the fight at hand and stay relevant to the operational tempo we were faced with.

Through the years I have been a part of several missions that are now well-known operations.

I am sure there is so much more we probably could have added, but these are the highs and lows of what I experienced which I wanted to share. Not everything is great. There are exceptionally proud moments, but also moments of hurt and sorrow (the loss of friends in training and combat).

How did the book come about?

Mir:  Once Nicholas and I had an idea about the book, like Rangers it was ever-evolving, and we diligently created a book proposal and submitted it to a couple of publishers. Marcus came back with an offer which also secured us an excellent agent, Alec Shane of Writers House, who handled difficult and stubborn Rangers like us – well, me - very well.

Nicholas:  Mir and I generated an outline: mostly it was just a chronological timeline of my service and key events in the outline. I still at this point wasn’t even sure there was anyone willing to bite, as I don’t have “Navy SEAL” in my title. But once Mir sent the proposal out, I think Osprey sent a response within a few hours. I was actually shocked that someone thought we had a great story to tell.

How did you write the book?

Mir:  When the contract was signed Nick and I spent way too many hours on the phone, which I recorded, while typing notes simultaneously. This was a long and drawn-out process and we would go over the material a great many times. There was truly a lot of back and forth about clarifications, operational security, and privacy concerns for the Rangers in the book and so forth. Once the manuscript was in shape Nick sent it to the Pentagon for clearance. Ten weeks was promised and passed, and finally, after eight months, at the end of February 2017, we received clearance. What a great day. There were no redactions per se, but we had to remove the names of certain units, which we did. Unfortunately, this delay had pushed the publication date back several times. But ultimately, this was great, because we were lucky to have retired Ranger Colonel Mike Kershaw review the manuscript several times and provide us with some very excellent advice, concerns and suggestions – I think we met most but not all – we are Rangers after all and have strong opinions! While we were rewriting to clarify certain passages, Mike sent the cleared manuscript to retired Ranger General Stan McChrystal for review. He was exceptionally kind in reading it very quickly. Between Mike, Stan, and other Rangers who provided us with endorsements, we felt we had done some justice to the modern Rangers of the 75th Ranger Regiment.

The manuscript went through a number of editorial passes by Marcus and especially Kate Moore, and the production moved through the professional hands of Gemma Gardner, who had to pull off some minor miracles, especially when it came to finalizing the photograph section last minute. I am particularly pleased with the maps detailing operations and am well pleased by the dynamic, perhaps even haunting, cover art. In my opinion we had a great team producing an excellent and very important book in the history of modern Special Operations.

Nicholas:  Mir and I spent several weeks on the phone, with him recording our conversations as I detailed the events of my career, although at first I’m sure that, for Mir, it was like pulling teeth to get me to open up.  We went through several drafts and I think we were at three months to get to this point, and then we sent the manuscript to the Department of Defense for their security review, which was quoted to take no longer than 10 weeks. Eight months later they returned it with a few minor redactions. Then it was through to Marcus Cowper and his staff of great people at Osprey, Kate Moore, Gemma Gardner, and several others, to get our finished product. Even though we missed our original release date by about a year, I think what we ended up with is an outstanding product to give the reader a peek into the Ranger World.

During all of this Mir kept mentioning the “next steps” of someone to write the foreword. He kept circling back to General (Ret.) Stan McChrystal after he had sent it to Colonel (Ret.) Mike Kershaw, and we had got an overall positive from him about what we had put together, but like all things Ranger, Colonel Kershaw did offer constructive criticism, which I greatly appreciate. I was feeling better about letting it be seen by General McChrystal. After General McChrystal had given us a thumbs-up, I felt really good about what we had written. Rangers are ALWAYS the hardest critics of Rangers.

On Writing - or I how fell into it

This is a blog by an author so I should have something about writing. I never considered writing as a career - I was too obsessed with Hollywood and oddly that is how I got my start as a professional writer. Amateurs are people who write for free - I have been there and will never do it again unless it is something I want to do.

Around 2000 or 2001 I worked on the film Black Hawk Down researching all things Ranger. I called and emailed veterans and tried my best to keep them all in the loop - although some guys were ungrateful dicks - the me-syndrome does hit Rangers just to a far smaller degree than most. In any event, a lot of them were very helpful and I assembled a ton of pictures for production - by the way for free! Eventually a 3rd Battboy (a Ranger from the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment) Mogadishu vet joined production and we worked together for a short while. I also hooked the official military tech advisor up with a prop house (uniforms, gear, weapons) - again for no money though usually some form of kickback does happen. I was too much of a team player and not motivated by money - WTF?

I was paid for maybe one or two weeks? eventually but was not taken to Morocco for filming - I found out later because the tech advisor’s wife thought I would badger the producer and director with my own projects - I was trying to become a producer back then. As if I would have been that unprofessional. I was highly annoyed, well pissed actually, but nothing I could do about it.

But I had a ton of pics, was habitually broke, and cold-emailed Osprey Publishing. Marcus Cowper commissioned me for an article on the relief effort of the Rangers. A 10th Mountain Division medic had provided a lot of photos and information. The article was never published as the magazine folded. But I had an in and wrote several smaller monographs for Osprey. But my focus remained on Hollywood. I wrote Shadow Warriors a history of American Rangers around 2003/4. Way too big a book as a first effort but overall it is solid. To date my best seller.

I produced an independent film called Soldier of God in 2005 which I did some rewrites on because of financial constraints. The DVD market tanked that year and next - of course, why wouldn’t it? Eventually, I decided that most people struggling in Hollywood suck, and the successful ones live in a bubble (I too wish I could live in that bubble) and it was time to pursue proper writing while still hanging on for that hopeful Hollywood career. SEALs came out, co-written with SEAL Chris Osman, and was one of the first books on modern SEAL combat in Afghanistan and Iraq but we got hammered by the 2008 economic collapse. The book did well enough but not well enough - if you know what I mean. I also ghost-wrote scripts and received reasonably decent pay for them and even revived a relationship for the original writer with the studio who had commissioned it. Great to make some money but that was never going to help me succeed in a tough nepotistic industry. I wrote another book, Vanquished, but I had an unhappy experience with a new editor (other authors also complained but were equally ignored) and I shifted my focus to screenwriting again for a number of years. I also co-wrote a few things with a few different people- not always a good thing to do - and came very close to proper agency representation and a sale but alas, not. My co-author couldn’t handle the rejections and flaked.

My common-law wife on the other hand began a very successful career as a TV writer in Canada and I returned to book writing in 2015/16 with a small book on the ancient battle of Zama during the Second Punic War fought in North Africa. It was important to start with something smallish - I think I wrote 40K words including rewrites and sections that were cut. Again Marcus Cowper had commissioned me and Nikolai Bogdanovic was my editor - I really enjoyed the experience and am very happy with the monograph. But it was a work for hire - so no royalties!

Subsequently I co-authored Run to the Sound of the Guns with Nicholas Moore about his Ranger combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq but the Pentagon’s clearance section took eight months instead of 8-10 weeks promised. The book got bumped twice before getting published in 2018. I am proud of the book in that it captures the voice of Nick very well. It also got some spiffy review from Rangers. Yes Marcus Cowper commissioned it.

The book also landed me agent Alec Shane at Writers House who negotiated the offer. I love Alec and can speak to him unfiltered! This is crucial.

I have some proposals out there, am working way too slowly on another non-commissioned book, and am tinkering with some other proposals as well as a comic book. I don’t make a living writing - my wife enables me… she also paid for my MA at King’s College London. She must like me.

Hollywood… that harsh mistress - well I have a pilot out there co-written with director W.D. Hogan based on a comic by Jim Starlin - people love it we are told, and CAA was looking for showrunners but crickets…

Half? my book collection. Once I owned 7 book stores and newsstands. That’s another story.

My script outline for a TV pilot. WTF? But it works for me.