At the center of the Austrian First Army’s advance, V Corps sent the 14th Infantry Division to secure the high ground around the town of Polichna. The division had secured the high ground south of Polichna around dawn, but when Russian troops occupied the town V Corps ordered the 76th Infan-try to eject them. Aided by several artillery batteries, the infantry began their uphill advance.

Maj. Gen. Georg Schariczer personally led his 27th Infantry Brigade up the slopes to Polichna, where they engaged in a furious close-quarters brawl for the town. The Russians fought house-to-house for Polichna until Austrian artillery fire set most of the buildings alight and they withdrew. Col. Ion Boeriu of the 76th Infantry Regiment joined his men in the hand-to-hand struggle, and he became the war’s first recipient of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, conferring instant ennoblement, while Schariczer received the knight’s cross of the Order of Leopold. “Every soldier was a hero,” Boeriu wrote later of the battle, and while that may have been true, over 500 of them were dead and more than 700 wounded, totaling a third of his regiment.