Battles of Luzhinsky -Extract 6- by Robert Fullarton Copyright Robert Fullarton

Battles of Luzhinsky

-Extract 6

by Robert Fullarton

Copyright Robert Fullarton

The fires of the soldiers were ablaze in the deep darkness of the night, alight amid a hypnotic atmosphere of life, energy, noise and celebration, with the smell of roast pork wafting through the air. The soldiers began to improvise their own songs to the “routing of the sons of Osman” from the gates of Vienna.

“Ahh exhileration!” Declared Colonel Von Goetze in sheer rapturous delight at the company of his Saxon compatriots who shook hands, bantered, exchanged schnapps, artefacts from the caravans of the Ottoman command. These moustachioed soldiers in elegant cavalier garb, were like boys again in the moment of an amicable celebration that went right through the night, but of course some men went beyond the limit of their own self control, and went recklessly drunk, duelled, some fell into the ditches of the Burg Bastion and were subsequently hospitalised. The drunken disorderly behaviour resulted in men being imprisoned for assaulting local peasants and for having looted the local taverns, robbed the proprietor of both his clothes and his alcohol, some were caught with a whip running wildly after the bare naked proprietor who fled the scene through the side streets off Stephansdome.

Luzhinsky Penned a poem that night in his own Makeshift tent, alone, with a single candle aglow he wrote...

At the Blue lit hour

Came the signal

The charging of the snow white steed

With speed through the forest

To the confluence of the Christian peoples

Then from the plains

Came the Leopards bold and fierce,

Our heavy hearts were feather light

At the lifting of the siege

With the emptying of the firmaments

Raining forth as joy

Across the land

Light upon the living and the dead

And tonight

The living are most certainly animated

In laughter

In company of brothers

From nations estranged

But brought together in the greatest peril

Forever to sail into the unknown once more!

Luzhinsky then wrote an entry into his diary, and a contemplative message came out from underneath his youthful pretensions.

I ran away from home because I did not to be bred for a specific life. I wanted to determine my own existence, in the ways of the army. I learned how to box, to sword fight, I read the work of Arrian, Homer and Cicero, but I did not find these thrills to be enough. I refused to remain stationed at the barracks in Warsaw. We drilled and marched, we crawled through mud, for six months, I went from being a dreamer and adventurer to being a hardened and devout soldier- devout that is the duties of the soldiers call! In the barracks friendships are formed upon a superficial level, but experience in combat- like what I experienced today!- cements new names and faces into a brotherhood, which every life recalls in different ways, these impressions are unforgettable, every man seeks what is greater than himself, but can he put the feelings into words which have stirred and made him risk so much? I have of late began to pray and of late been shaken to the core of this experience called war. Existence is indeed flung upon the individual soul, and it is his burden to run, at full unflinching speed into the light of the creator, do we not do this when we ride at full capacity into the musket and the arrows of the enemy?