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Count Casimir Pulaski
"I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it..."

      Fort Pulaski is named for Count Casimir Pulaski, a Polish soldier-patriot  mortally wounded in his efforts to save the city of  Savannah from the British during the American RevolutionaryWar.

Fort Pulaski is composed of 25 million bricks, with seventy-foot pilings drilled into the mud for support of the massive structure.  The fort is one of thirty coastal fortifications built in response to the War of 1812, when the British burned the young nation's capital.  Construction of these Third System forts, pushed national coastline defense to an unprecedented level.  

Count Casimir Pulaski, a Polish soldier-patriot, was forced to leave his native homeland after the Polish nobles failed to quash repeated Russian attacks.   The exiled soldier readily lent his military experience to the Baltic states in their quest to beat back the Russians.  Pulaski was sorely disappointed in his inability to secure freedom for the Baltic people.  Again, he was forced to flee the Russians.

American statesman Benjamin Franklin inquired whether Pulaski would help the colonists in their quest for independence from the British.  The new recruit organized a cavalry unit composed of American, Polish, Irish, German, and French troops.   October, 1779, the newly formed unit engaged the British in the Siege of Savannah.

Historians are unsure how Pulaski died.  The popular account holds that Pulaski rallied the troops in a cavalry charge upon hearing that a fellow officer was hit in the leg by a musket ball.  During the charge, Pulaski was struck in the thigh by grapeshot and fell from his horse.  Within days, gangrene claimed the war hero's life. Historians continue to debate what happened to Pulaski's body after his death.   One traditional account is that Pulaski died aboard the American ship Wasp and is buried at sea.  A second claim is that he was first buried at Greenwich Plantation in Georgia and later reburied under a monument in one of the downtown Savannah squares.   September 27, 1996, bones were disinterred from under the Pulaski Monument in Monterey Square. To date, the bone analysis is inconclusive.                                                                                                                                                                                       

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