As a result of the warfare in 1920, one part of the Bolshevik Russian army under Mikhail Tukhachevsky wanted to take the Polish capital, Warsaw. In the south, the other front, which the main force was Semyon Budyonny’s 1st Mounted Army, attempted to capture Lw\u00f3w. This city was being prepared for defence by regular Polish army troops and many volunteers, among them schoolchildren and students.<\/p>\n
Just as the decisive battle of the war was taking place on the outskirts of Warsaw, Budyonny’s troops launched an attack on Lw\u00f3w. On 17 August, a battalion of the 240th Infantry Regiment commanded by Captain Boles\u0142aw Zaj\u0105czkowski, comprising 330 volunteer soldiers, was retreating to the city along the Lw\u00f3w-Tarnopol railway line. Near the village of Zadw\u00f3rze, the Poles encountered Bolshevik troops from the 6th Cavalry Division. After a heroic battle, they captured the Zadw\u00f3rze railway station and a nearby hill, preventing the enemy from further penetrating the gap in the Polish defence. The Bolsheviks drew additional forces, and soon their advantage was tenfold. Polish positions were shelled by artillery and machine guns. Polish volunteers repulsed the fiercely charging cavalry six times. More Bolshevik forces were arriving on the scene of the battle. The Poles who defended the hill were surrounded. Unfortunately, they ran out of ammunition and a fight was continued with rifle butts and bayonets.<\/p>\n
The heroic resistance by the Poles enraged the Bolsheviks, who killed the wounded and chopped up the bodies of the dead with sabres. After an 11-hour battle, Captain Zaj\u0105czkowski ordered a handful of remaining soldiers to withdraw to a nearby forest. Surrounded, with a handful of officers, he committed suicide, not wishing to be captured by the enemy. A total of 318 Polish volunteers died at Zadworze. Their heroic day-long resistance delayed the march of many thousands of Budionny’s troops towards Lw\u00f3w and, at the same time, allowed other Polish troops to retreat to the city.<\/p>\n
The bodies of several soldiers who fell at Zadw\u00f3r were successfully identified, including Captain Zaj\u0105czkowski. They were buried in the Cemetery of Eaglets in Lw\u00f3w. The others were buried at the site of the battle including Konstanty Zarugiewicz, a defender of Lw\u00f3w in 1918. In 1925, his mother Jadwiga chose one from three coffins with the ashes of unknown soldiers, that was later ceremonially buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the Battle of Zadworze on 17 August 1920, more than 300 Polish soldiers resisted fiercely for many hours against the overwhelming Bolshevik army. The vast majority of them died.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":26637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n