Battle of Kostiuchnówka

The Battle of Kostiuchnówka, fought on 4–6 July 1916 in Volhynia (PL), was the largest and bloodiest battle of the Polish Legions. During the Brusilov Offensive the Russian Third Army struck on the Styr towards Kovel. In its path stood the First and Third Brigades of the Legions, about 5,000 infantry, facing the XLVI Corps, which was almost three times as strong. For three days, even as their neighbours fell back, the legionaries beat off assault after assault and counter-attacked, and when the whole front began to retreat they were among the last to leave for the Stokhid. It cost them about 2,000 killed, wounded and missing. The battle was a tactical defeat, but in Polish memory it became a symbol of the worth of the Legion soldier, and the political consequences of those days led to a crisis in the Legions and to the departure of Józef Piłsudski.

Name and dates

The battle took its name from the village of Kostiuchnówka (today Kostiukhnivka in Volyn Oblast, Ukraine), near which the front line of the Legion trenches ran. Between the wars both forms of the name, Kostiuchnówka and Kościuchnówka, were in use, and the plaque on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier reads “Kościuchnówka 4 XI 1915 i 4–6 VII 1916”. Polish accounts agree in dating the battle to 4–6 July 1916: from the Russian artillery preparation on the morning of 4 July to the withdrawal from the Styr on the afternoon of 6 July. Russia then used the Julian calendar, so in Russian documents these are 21–23 June. Russian literature does not treat it as a separate battle. It describes the fighting at Kostiuchnówka, Hołuzja, Wołczeck and Manevychi as part of the renewed advance of the South-Western Front on Kovel.

Background

In the autumn of 1915 all three brigades of the Legions found themselves for the first time on a single stretch of front, on the Styr in Volhynia. In November the Second Brigade took the Brickworks Hill here after bloody assaults, and from then on it was called Polish Hill. Then the front went quiet. The legionaries spent the winter and spring in elaborate trenches, dugouts and camps on the edge of the forests between Hołuzja, Kostiuchnówka and Optowa. The most forward point of the position was Piłsudski’s Redoubt, a sand dune above the marshes. Behind it lay the Polish Grove and the Sappers’ Grove, and in the rear a settlement built by the legionaries and called Legionowo.

Meanwhile the dispute between the Legions and the Austrian command was growing. From February 1916 the Council of Colonels (PL), an informal body of Legion commanders including Piłsudski, Bolesław Roja, Józef Haller and Kazimierz Sosnkowski, demanded that the Legions be recognised as a Polish army under Polish command. On 2 July 1916 its representatives put these demands to the commander of the Legions, General Stanisław Puchalski (PL). The battle cut the dispute short.

On 4 June 1916 the Brusilov Offensive began. The Russian armies broke through the front at Lutsk, and throughout June the forces of Alexander von Linsingen’s army group struggled to patch the gap. At the end of the month Stavka handed General Alexei Brusilov the Third Army of General Leonid Lesh, which was to strike with its left wing at Hołuzja and Manevychi and then on to Kovel. The Legions, about 4,850 bayonets of the First and Third Brigades with 26–34 guns, formed part of the Austro-Hungarian cavalry corps of General Leopold von Hauer. To their north stood the Hungarian 11th Honvéd Cavalry Division, and to the south, on Polish Hill, the weak 128th Infantry Brigade with battalions of the Landsturm. The Second Brigade, about 1,350 bayonets, was in reserve. The Russian XLVI Corps of General Nikolai Istomin had two infantry divisions, the 77th and 100th, and a Cossack division, with the 16th Cavalry Division in reserve. Polish accounts put its strength at about 13,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry with 104–120 guns.

Course: 4 July

On the morning of 4 July, at about six, the Russian artillery, directed by observers in balloons, opened fire on the Legion positions. By Polish estimates about 20,000 shells fell on them that day. Trenches were buried, telephone lines cut, and shells even tore open graves in the Legion cemetery. At about noon, during a lull, Piłsudski went up to the Redoubt and, according to the memoirs of the First Brigade’s doctor Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski, spent about an hour and a half there among the soldiers.

Towards evening the Russian infantry moved forward. Wave after wave stopped at the uncut wire in front of the Polish trenches, but on the right wing the Russians broke the defence of the 128th Brigade and took Polish Hill. The hardest hit was the 5th Infantry Regiment of Lieutenant Colonel Leon Berbecki, known as the regiment of the “Zuchowaci” (the Daredevils). Its I Battalion, threatened with encirclement, fell back along a narrow footbridge across the marshes, and according to accounts only 160 of about 500 men survived. Captain Stanisław Sław-Zwierzyński (PL) was killed in a bayonet counter-attack. In the evening the regiment’s 8th Company under Second Lieutenant Aleksander Myszkowski (PL) counter-attacked towards Polish Hill. Piłsudski’s Redoubt, exposed on its right, nevertheless had to be abandoned during the night.

Course: 5 and 6 July

At dawn on 5 July four companies of the First Brigade counter-attacked up the hill and were almost wiped out. Then the Russian artillery again smothered the Polish Grove, where the defenders now sat in shallow, barely dug trenches. The 3rd Infantry Regiment of the Second Brigade, brought up from reserve, retook Polish Hill. In his order of 11 July Piłsudski credited the recapture of the hill to Myszkowski’s counter-attack of the previous evening, while later accounts stress the role of the 3rd Regiment. Both agree that regaining the hill delayed the withdrawal by a whole day and saved the units standing south of the Legions. In the evening the Russians drove the bled-white 3rd Regiment off the hill, and the right wing of the defence had to fall back several kilometres to the third line, Optowa–Wołczeck.

On 6 July the Russians broke through the front on the sector of the neighbouring Austro-Hungarian units and threw the 16th Cavalry Division into the fight. At Wołczeck its squadrons charged the positions of the First Brigade. They were repulsed by the V and VI Battalions of Major Fleszar, while Major Brzoza’s guns fired almost from the skirmish line. In the afternoon the Legions Command ordered a withdrawal behind the Stokhid. The 1st Regiment of Edward Rydz-Śmigły formed the rearguard. The wounded commander of the 3rd Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Henryk Minkiewicz (PL), was taken prisoner with part of his men. On the night of 6–7 July, in the forest near Manevychi, a Russian patrol fired on the head of the 5th Regiment’s column. Berbecki was badly wounded, and Major Tadeusz Furgalski “Wyrwa” (PL), one of the most highly regarded officers of the First Brigade, was killed. After the retreat, around 10 July, the Legions were given a few days’ rest.

Losses

In three days the Legions lost about 2,000 men killed, wounded and missing, roughly a third of those who fought. The 3rd and 5th Infantry Regiments each lost about half their strength. Piłsudski wrote that Berbecki’s regiment had lost its commander, both battalion commanders, more than half its officers and almost half its men. Russian losses have not been established. Russian accounts do not give them separately for the fighting at Kostiuchnówka. Polish accounts speak of heavy losses among the attackers in front of the wire, but their numbers cannot be verified.

Significance

The Russians achieved their aim. The Russian military historian Anton Kersnovsky wrote that the corps of the Third Army “routed” Hauer’s group in the fighting at Hołuzja, Wołczeck and Manevychi, and by 14 July the armies of Lesh and Kaledin stood on the Stokhid. There, however, the advance came to a halt, and the Russians did not take Kovel before the offensive ended. Polish tradition sees the battle above all as a defence that kept the front from being smashed and gave the neighbouring units time to retreat. In his order of 11 July Piłsudski called it the hardest of the brigade’s battles so far and wrote that the legionaries were always the last to leave the field. The conduct of the Legions also impressed the Germans, which according to some historians contributed to the decisions that in November 1916 led to the announcement of a Kingdom of Poland.

For the Legions themselves the battle opened a crisis. The bled-white brigades came back from the front convinced that they were dying for someone else’s cause. On 11 July the Council of Colonels decided to send the Austrian Supreme Army Command a memorandum demanding that the Legions be turned into a Polish corps with Polish officers. Piłsudski backed this pressure by asking to be relieved of his command. According to Andrzej Garlicki (PL) he did so as early as 9 July, according to other accounts on 29 July. The Austrians sent him on leave and accepted his resignation only on 26 September, a few days after the Legions had been turned into the Polish Auxiliary Corps. Many officers and men of the First and Third Brigades followed the Commandant in asking to be discharged. The dispute over whose army the legionaries were flared up again a year later, in the oath crisis, which ended with the break-up of the Legions and Piłsudski’s internment.

In the Second Polish Republic Kostiuchnówka became a place of remembrance. On 15 July 1928 ceremonies attended by about 3,000 guests were held on Polish Hill and work began on raising the Mound of Glory of the Legions, and in 1936, on the twentieth anniversary of the battle, veterans opened a school with a hostel in the village. A Legion cemetery still exists on the battlefield, cared for by Polish scouts.