Poles in Kaisers Army On the Front of the First World War. Ryszard Kaczmarek

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СКАЧАТЬ paraded among the crowds of city dwellers: “Stretched in long lines, companies occupied the market square in Śrem. Wagons on the sides. The commanders assume command over the companies. All city dwellers appear to accompany their relatives to the railway station. The heavy backpacks are set and filled with various treats. In groups to the right! And a long line of a marching column heads toward the railway station. Wives, children, fiancées, parents, siblings, and friends accompany both sides of the column. Last look at the town hall, the church’s tower, and the sky-blue ribbon of the Warta River. A steaming train is ready. The soldiers fill the cattle wagons with benches.”¹⁵¹

      The process of the mobilization was not everywhere the same; sometimes there was embarrassment. For instance, the reserve soldiers of the Infantry Regiment No. 157 did not arrive as regularly as they were expected, and their physical condition did not meet officers’ requirements. After all, maneuver warfare required the infantry to march at a proper pace. On August 6, the regiment was ready to head off but only after it departed as a whole toward the military training area in Hajduki Nyskie, it turned out that the military competences and the synchronization of subunits were far from the requirements of German officers. Returning after the strenuous march on a scorching day, the reserve soldiers were so exhausted that their march through the city streets was called off due to their miserable appearance.¹⁵²

      The confiscation of horses, or strictly speaking, their adaptation to military duty, was an even bigger issue. Each horse underwent a veterinary examination ←56 | 57→and – while there was no question about the quality of carthorses – there were very few good saddle horses for officers. Fitting them with new harnesses and adapting to work in teams of sometimes even six horses required a lot of effort.¹⁵³

Border Struggles

      Until August 6–7, quartermaster services in garrisons feverishly – but in an organized manner – raced against time to prepare hundreds of thousands of soldiers for transportation in trains. Meanwhile, some units on active duty (professional officers and conscripts) took part in the fights at the borders already in the first week of the war. The Poles in Kaiser’s army had to traditionally shield the Russian frontier, according to the mobilization plan, by virtue of their nineteenth-century experience. Some regiments had to support the protection of cities from possible sabotage, even if they stayed in garrisons and did not directly participate in action.

      There were many reports of any possible dangers in the first weeks of the war. Particularly those concerning spies. The entire Prussia gossiped about a French car filled to the brim with money (or golden ingots) that purportedly headed to Russia.¹⁵⁴ Although ridiculous, the gossip became so popular that the soldiers of the Infantry Regiment No. 157 and the 21st Field Artillery Regiment seriously searched for this imaginary car. The French dressed as Germans were said to drive the car accompanied by elegant ladies.¹⁵⁵ In turn, Greater Poland saw a modified version of the gossip, according to which there were three cars filled with gold, which were to flee from Germany and attempt to cross the German-Russian border. Therefore, military patrols thoroughly frisked all the encountered cars.¹⁵⁶

      In the first days of August, artillerymen from the Nysa regiment participated in another action, no less grotesque. This time, it was the military authorities who raised the false alarm. On August 3, the commanders of the 12th Infantry Division informed that French aircrafts were seen in central Germany heading toward Silesia. It was a complete absurd in regard of contemporary technical abilities and the range of military aircrafts. However, two batteries were prepared in Nysa to resist this imaginary air strike. Interestingly, some cannoneers even “noticed” these aircrafts in their mind’s eyes and, on August 3–7, fired a few shots ←57 | 58→which, in turn, caused panic among civilians and their irrational belief that there will soon happen a French attack.¹⁵⁷

      Just after the outbreak of the war, there was a real military action on the border between Upper Silesia and the Kingdom of Poland. The aim was to occupy the Dąbrowa Basin and the city of Częstochowa. Since the repartition of Polish territories during the Congress of Vienna, the boundary line between Prussia and Russia created a considerable danger for the Central Powers, because it disjoined Austrian Galicia and Prussia. It was particularly unfavorable for Silesia, which was not protected by any water barrier. While creating the strategic plan, the German General Staff assumed that only one out of eight German armies will engage in the fight in the East – the Eighth Army under the command of Colonel General Maximilian von Prittwitz und Gaffron that consisted of army corps I, XVII, XX, one cavalry division, and Landwehr units – while the Habsburg monarchy will take the main initiative.¹⁵⁸ However, early wartime decision postulated the preventive march into the western parts of the Kingdom of Poland in the very beginning of the war in order to even out the frontline and push an even theoretical danger away from Silesia, before Regierungsbezirk Opole sends its echelons toward the western front.

      The ones to realize this maneuver were soldiers on active duty from the Upper Silesian garrisons. A tragicomic incident preceded the entire operation, although one might question the credibility of this account, considering that it refers to press coverage; even if it appeared before the introduction of pre-publication censorship. The information probably aimed at reinforcing civilian morale and strengthen their belief in the German Army’s primacy over the Russian Army. On July 31, the company of Katowice from the 22nd Infantry Regiment conducted routine field training near the so-called Three Emperors’ Corner. On the way back, its members looked with interest at the border bridge between Mysłowice and Modrzejów. When a Russian guard spotted the German unit, as the journalist recalls,

      he hastily hid behind the bridge, and he did that with speed “unusual for Russians.” He stayed there until the German soldiers returned to marching. He then came out and fired two warning shots in the air. He reported to the rittmeister and captain that he saw Prussian soldiers next to the bridge. However, the company at that moment was already on its way to Katowice singing its songs.

      ←58 | 59→

      According to further press coverage, there were fifty deserters from the Kingdom of Poland to the German side already before the outbreak of the war.¹⁵⁹

      The opinion about Russian soldiers’ morale was not high in Germany at the beginning of the war. Particularly after the Russo-Japanese War, people knew about the growing problems of the Russian Empire. The above description sought to ensure the soldiers and civilians about that fact. Russia was presented as a barbaric and backward country, and Cossack soldiers personified this characteristic. There was no trace left from the brotherhood of arms of the second half of the nineteenth century. Since the very beginning of the First World War, the Cossack was a synonym of homeland’s enemy. Popular leaflets and playing cards, published in thousands of copies, contemptuously presented the Russian soldier as a primitive ragamuffin with a long untrimmed beard and a bottle of schnapps in his hand, his rifle on a string instead of a belt, wearing a huge winter cap and a too long military greatcoat.¹⁶⁰

      The Russian destruction of border bridges on August 1 did not prevent the quick seizure of undefended Dąbrowa Basin and Częstochowa by the Upper Silesia regiments. During this few-day-long operation, some subunits of the 22nd Infantry Regiment marched out of the barracks already in the morning on August 1 in order to position themselves by the frontier near the Three Emperors’ Corner; СКАЧАТЬ