This happened in 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War. Our regiments were stationed in eastern Manchuria in the Sypingai positions. To them, from the disposition of the Japanese, a rider with a white flag came forward. On behalf of his military leader, he invited any of the Russian officers to go out and fight a Japanese combatant in a wide field with sabers.
In the Russian camp, they began to look for someone to put up against the samurai.
Then a tall and very thin lieutenant appeared in front of the commander's tent. His name was Alexander Saichich, 32 years old, he was a Serb from Montenegro, from the Vasoevich tribe. At his own request, he went to war with the Japanese and served in the detachment of Montenegrin volunteers Jovan Lipovets. Awarded and wounded, the brave Lexo Saichich volunteered to slaughter the samurai.
This Montenegrin was famous for his martial art. He could saddle a horse at full gallop, crawl under it during the race, and it was said that once at a fair he jumped two oxen, harnessed to a yoke with a ral. With a simple stick, he knocked the saber out of the hands of an experienced fighter, and once he met in a duel with an Italian fencing teacher, he disarmed him and made him run without looking back.
Under the sounds of the march, Lieutenant Saichich rode out of the Russian ranks into the middle of the field. A rider with a Japanese curved sword, a katana, moved towards him.
The samurai was dressed in black furs and, as the Montenegrin himself later recalled, looked like an evil eagle. Fear of God. The encouraging voice of the troops died down as the opponents galloped on top of one another, and the ground swayed under the horse's hooves. The blades rang, and suddenly, to a glancing blow from a katana that cut his forehead, Lexo Saichich responded with a fatal thrust. There was a scream, and the samurai's horse was already racing away, dragging the dead body stuck with its feet in the stirrups. A corpse in black fell a hundred meters in front of the first ranks of the Japanese army. Saichich reached the lying enemy, bowed and galloped back to his own.
The Russian regiments greeted the Montenegrin, stretching out on command "at attention!" Then there was thunderous applause. Admiral Rozhdestvensky embraced Lieutenant Saichich in his wide embrace, and soon, with special escort, the Japanese admiral Togo arrived, congratulating the winner with a slight bow. For this fight Lekso Saichich received the nickname "Muromets" in the army.
