DECATUR - In his re-enactor role, Lloyd Swanson dons a red coat, sky-blue trousers, yellow cavalry boots, steel body armor, a steel helmet, sable fur hat, steel arm guards, curved sword, wolf fur draped across his shoulder and wings made of simulated eagle feathers.

He portrays a Polish hussar, a fighting horseman from 1575 to 1700.

During a recent tour of Poland, the Decatur man participated in two re-enactments of medieval Polish-Swedish battles inside and outside a 13th-century castle. He even got to fire a cannon.

"The hussars charged in the second battle, there was volley after volley of musket fire, powder smoke was everywhere and it was great," he said. "I got a slow match burn on my thumb."

A retired Decatur police officer, Swanson has been attending re-enactments and Renaissance fairs for about 30 years, wearing his full hussar costume for the past few years. The outfit weighs 35 pounds and requires another person to help him dress. For this article, he was helped by his son Andrew of Washington, Ill., who dressed in aluminum chain mail for the occasion.

"I walk around, have my picture taken and give a five-minute lecture," he said of his Renaissance fair appearances. "I'm missing an 18-foot lance and a horse. Otherwise, everything is authentic hussar. The armor is made by an artisan in New Hampshire. My mother made the coat and trousers."

He is helping form a St. Michael's Banner Polish group in the Midwest. St. Michael is the patron saint of chivalry. There's a St. Michael's medallion on his body armor.

In a book by Richard Brzezinski, the Polish winged hussar is described like this:

"Certainly among the most spectacular warriors of all time. To Poles, he is much more - a symbol of justifiable pride in military achievements and of a bygone age when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was geographically the largest nation in Europe, stretching from the Baltic almost to the Black Sea."

The hussars were noblemen who formed light cavalry units. Their era of great victories was 1577 to 1621. In 1683, the Polish hussars won an epic battle with the Ottoman Empire when Vienna was besieged.

Swanson, who is half Polish, became fascinated with the hussars when he was in school. He was with the Decatur Police Department for 27 years, retiring in June 2006 as master patrol officer. "I was the DUI king," he said, "turning in more than 1,000 arrests for driving under the influence."

In 2003, Swanson received an award from the police for his DUI work. During the 1990s, he was president of the Police Benevolent Labor Union.

bfallstrom@herald-review.com