Polish affair during the Great War, part 4
"Polski's Treasures with the Baltic Sea", a painting by Wojciech Kossak depicting the events in Puck, February 10, 19920. The Pomeranian Rifle Division began its work on January 16 in Torun. It was joined by the 18th Wielkopolska Rifle Division (2nd Infantry Division). On February 15, 11, the last soldiers left Gdansk.
1918 brought independence to the Poles, but the Polish state was formed in 1919. It was in 1919 that decisions were made on the internal structure of the state and the search for support in the democratic countries of Western Europe. They remain in force to this day. In 1919, the Republic of Poland was involved in several armed conflicts, but they were of only limited importance. The real test for the young state and its army was to take place in 1920.
On the eve of independence, Poland had only a token military force. Their core was made up of several thousand soldiers of the Army of the Polish Kingdom of Poland. During October, the number of soldiers doubled and exceeded 10. In November, new military formations appeared: units of the former Austro-Hungarian army were polonized in Lesser Poland, and units of the Polish Military Organization (VOEN) were created in the former Kingdom of Poland. They did not possess great combat abilities: the spontaneous demobilization of the imperial-royal army led to the collapse of the existing units, while in the Kingdom of Poland the units of prisoners of war were primarily formations of public order. The establishment of internal order - the disarmament of various groups and gangs, the liquidation of the self-proclaimed workers' and peasants' republics - continued until the beginning of 000.
The military weakness of Poland is evidenced by the fact that a combat group of less than 2000 people was allocated for the first major military operation - the liberation of Lviv. Therefore, Lvov had to fight alone for several weeks. In battles with an external enemy - at the turn of 1918 and 1919 they were mainly Rusyns, Czechs and Bolshevik Russians - lies the genesis of special detachments on the front line. At the end of 1918, these four groups meant that the Polish Army numbered about 50 soldiers. The fifth element of the armed forces was the Greater Poland Army, organized from January 000, and the sixth was the "Blue" Army, that is, the armies organized in France and Italy.
Construction and expansion of the Polish Army
The basis of the army was the infantry. Its main fighting unit was a battalion of several hundred soldiers. The battalions were part of the regiments, but the regiments had primarily administrative and training tasks: such a regiment had a garrison somewhere in the interior of the country, where it trained more soldiers, clothed them and fed them. The role of the regiment on the battlefield was much smaller, as the division was the most important. The division was a tactical formation, a kind of army in miniature: it united infantry battalions, artillery batteries and cavalry squadrons, thanks to which it could independently conduct all types of combat operations. In practice, an army not organized into divisions is nothing but an armed mob, at best a paramilitary organization of order.
Until the spring of 1919, there were no divisions in the Polish Army. Various combat groups fought at the front, and regiments were formed from trained young volunteers in the country. For various reasons, the draft was not carried out in the first months. Hardened veterans of the Great Patriotic War wanted to return to their families as soon as possible, and their call to arms could end in mass desertion and even uprisings. In all three dividing armies there was revolutionary ferment, it was necessary to wait until the mood calmed down. Moreover, the institutions of the young Polish state could not cope with conscription: preparing lists of conscripts, placing them, and most importantly, forcing those reluctant to uniforms. But the biggest problem was the complete lack of money. An army costs money, so first you had to figure out what resources you have, set up a financial system, and create an efficient tax collection system. Conscription was introduced on January 15, 1919 by decree of the Head of State.
Initially, it was supposed to form 12 infantry divisions, but it soon became clear that the state of the Polish state allows this number to be increased. Divisions began to form only at the turn of March and April 1919. Although small and ill-equipped units fought the aggressors for several months, their solitary dedication made it possible to prepare strong and combat-ready troops, whose arrival almost immediately changed the course of events. the fate of the fight. And although, in addition to infantry, cavalry was also organized into independent tactical formations - artillery, sappers, very strong aviation and no less strong armored weapons - the dynamics of the formation of an infantry division most clearly shows the political, economic and military problems of the young Polish state.
The first three divisions were organized thanks to legionnaires. Two of them fought against the Russian Bolsheviks and liberated Vilnius in the spring of 1919. Volunteers of the former border self-defense from Kaunas to Minsk fought with them. In October 1919, two divisions were formed, which were named Lithuanian-Belarusian. They remained symbolically separated from other tactical units of the Polish Army, and their soldiers became the driving force behind General Żeligowski's actions in Vilnius. After the war, they became the 19th and 20th Rifle Divisions.
The 3rd infantry division of the legion fought against the Rusyns and Ukrainians. Two more were formed on the same front: the 4th Rifle Regiment was part of the former Lviv aid, and the 5th Rifle Regiment was part of the Lvov brigade. The following were formed from regiments in the former Kingdom and former Galicia: 6th Infantry Regiment in Krakow, 7th Infantry Regiment in Częstochowa, 8th Infantry Regiment in Warsaw. In June, the 9th Rifle Division was created in Polesie and the 10th Rifle Division was created by merging the Lodz regiments with the Polish 4th Rifle Division, which had just arrived in the country.
