<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Starting in college, I’ve had recurring dreams spread over a period of nearly fifty years. In these dreams, I found myself transported to Moscow, 1812 and knew my name was Jean-Luc and I was in Napoleon\u2019s army. In Moscow, I met and married a young German girl named Anna Lise. The horrors of the 1812 retreat were part of the dreams, especially crossing the River Berizina. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found myself in Russia in 1812 Moscow. I was in a dark room, passionately kissing a young woman. A strong sense for her name came to me. It was Anna Lise and my name again was Jean-Luc. She was the daughter of a German family living in Moscow and I was staying in her family\u2019s home. When the darkness receded, I found myself huddled in a bed with my boots on in a small room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this point, I began to understand who I was and where I was. It appeared that I was a junior officer in the Grand Army of the Republic under Napoleon. In the short time I had in Moscow, I became very close to this young woman. She and I would take long walks in the park along the river near her home, talking at great length and enjoying each other\u2019s company. We apparently fell in love, despite or perhaps because of the conditions we found ourselves in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As time went on, I was given orders that we were to abandon Moscow and return to France. Once the orders were received, we needed to prepare for departure quickly. I found this anguishing because I could not bear to leave Anna Lise. I sought and got permission from my superiors to bring her with us in our retreat and arranged a carriage for her. As we retreated from Moscow, it was not just Anna Lise who came with me, but her parents as well. They feared the Russians would retaliate against them for providing me a place to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anna Lise\u2019s parents had a butcher shop in the German section of Moscow. When we left Moscow, they filled their carriage with a collection of sausage, bread, and cheese, concealing the food as well as they could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I kept their carriage as near as I could to myself and my troops. The first few days were uneventful, but then things began to go very wrong and discipline within the ranks deteriorated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The retreat went from bad to worse. We came upon a large river which we couldn\u2019t immediately cross as the Russians had destroyed the existing bridges. We, along with the entire army, camped on the edge of a very marshy area near the river. It was cold and snowing. The soldiers were laying logs across the marshland toward some bridges being built. The marsh went for a very long way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the troops and supply wagons began to enter the log road across the marshland, the Russian army came up from our rear. The rear forces skirmished with the Russians, but the Russians were also sending cannon fire into the scene. Everything was chaos, but we kept moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the banks of the river that we were trying to cross as the Russian artillery fired on us, I was able to get the carriage with Anna Lise\u2019s family across the makeshift bridge. I led my horse and walked with Anna Lise across the bridge. The scene was chaotic. The temperature freezing. Anna Lise was dazed and fearful and the full realization of how young she was (about 16) and how all of this must terrify her struck me hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, we were among those able to cross the river. Looking back, we could see the Russian cannon beginning to destroy our log road across the marshland and people, mostly the trailing civilians were caught up in the bombardment and killed. Though many of us escaped across the river, many did not, including a large number of the army\u2019s supply wagons. We were now in even shorter supply of food and the weather continued to worsen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Side-note from 2015. When I wrote this summary in 2010, I did not know any of the details regarding the retreat from Moscow. But, having this vivid remembrance led me to checking out the details of the retreat. It became very obvious that what I saw with this visualization was the crossing of the river Berezina.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n After crossing the bridge, we traveled uneventfully for a few days. With our carriage and horses, we were moving quickly along the road, passing many bedraggled soldiers. There was little discipline in these ranks. We came to a halt as rumor spread that Napoleon was leaving us to return to Paris. We found a small building to stay in, built a fire, and got as comfortable as possible. My overwhelming feeling was that I needed to protect Anna Lise, but I had military duties that needed attention. A meeting of officers was called to discuss strategies for our retreat, especially since we learned Napoleon was leaving to go to Paris. I left one of my soldiers to guard the building with Anna Lise and her family and proceeded to my meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While I was gone, some troops unfamiliar to me suspected that there was food and warmth within the building where I left Anna Lise. They attacked my guard, who killed several, but was overwhelmed. The remaining two quickly killed Anna Lise\u2019s parents, but told her to stay put. They found the food and ate and warmed by the fire. After satisfying themselves with food and warmth, they turned their attention to Anna Lise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My point of visualization now seemed to change where I was now seeing things through her eyes. The soldiers were coming after Anna Lise, ripping at her clothes. She fended them off and was able to kill one with a knife. My guard recovered enough from his injuries to kill the other attacker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What happened devastated me and my anguish was unbearable. It was very cold and snowing. I no longer had any desire to stay with the army. I bundled Anna Lise onto my horse and left, deciding I was going to leave the army and try to return to my home village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am uncertain how the journey went, but I believe that I found my way to a city, which I think was in Lithuania. I settled in for the remainder of the winter, but got sick. I\u2018m not sure if I died here or got home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2016, my wife Kathleen and I vacationed in France. We exchanged homes with a French family in a town not far from Versailles. A wonderful experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our many visits to Paris, we searched for an old lithograph picturing the \u2018Crossing of the Berezina\u2019 in small bookstores near the Left Bank. We found one and it hangs in my office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also took a side trip to Normandy. I hardly ever use tour guides, feeling more comfortable with my own research, but at the last minute, caved in to my wife\u2019s request to go on a tour of the beaches. It was great, we ended up with a very young tour guide girl and had with us a very funny set of brothers from Finland, who were motorcycling across Europe, and a young man traveling by himself from Kentucky. The group quickly became friendly and shared stories of our homes. The tour guide was in her mid-20\u2019s, just out of university and said she came from the Alsace. She was half French, half Prussian. She described her childhood home, and I decided then that my story would start in the Alsace. Colmar felt like the best choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Background Starting in college, I’ve had recurring dreams spread over a period of nearly fifty years. In these dreams, I found myself transported to Moscow, 1812 and knew my name was Jean-Luc and I was in Napoleon\u2019s army. In Moscow, I met and married a young German girl named Anna Lise. The horrors of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1204","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"gary.cullen@comcast.net","author_link":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/author\/gary-cullencomcast-net\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Background Starting in college, I’ve had recurring dreams spread over a period of nearly fifty years. In these dreams, I found myself transported to Moscow, 1812 and knew my name was Jean-Luc and I was in Napoleon\u2019s army. In Moscow, I met and married a young German girl named Anna Lise. The horrors of the…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1204"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1441,"href":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1204\/revisions\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garycullen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Everything remembered above this is untainted by any previous knowledge. However, the part below this about Napoleon leaving is possibly tainted from what I learned when I researched into the Berezina River.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nHow I Started in Colmar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n