Battle of Rarańcza (1915)

The Battle of Rarańcza in June 1915 was the most important engagement of the Second Brigade of the Polish Legions on the border of Bukovina and Bessarabia. The legionaries attacked on the right wing of the Austro-Hungarian XI Corps, which, after the Russian retreat from Galicia, was trying to push them back from Czernowitz. On 12 June the brigade’s infantry took the village of Rarańcza without a fight, but was held up in front of the Russian trenches on the hills above neighbouring Rokitna (PL). The next day the command threw a squadron of uhlans against those trenches. The charge at Rokitna cost the lives of its commander and more than a dozen riders, but during the night the Russians came down from the hills. Two days later the Austrians themselves fell back to the Rokitna, and the legionaries dug in at Rarańcza for several months.

Name and dates

Rarańcza, Rarancze in German and Rarancea in Romanian, is a village north-east of Czernowitz, on the Austrian side of the old border. Today it is called Ridkivtsi. Rokitna lay just across the border, already in Russian Bessarabia. In Legion tradition people spoke of “the June fighting of the infantry at Rarańcza”, as the magazine Żołnierz Legionów i P.O.W. put it in 1938, but what survived in collective memory was above all the charge at Rokitna. The name of Rarańcza returned to the history of the Legions in February 1918, when the same brigade broke through the front there. That is why this page is marked with the year 1915.

This page uses the dates 12–15 June 1915, following the detailed account by Juliusz S. Tym in a 2024 booklet of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). On 12 June the legionaries took Rarańcza and halted in front of the Russian position on the Rokitna, and on 15 June the corps command ordered the units back to the hills on the right bank of the stream and the brigade took over a sector at Rarańcza. The brigade’s part in the advance had begun as early as 8 June. Polish Wikipedia dates the fighting at Rarańcza to 11–17 June, and a 2015 note on the dzieje.pl portal places the brigade’s heaviest fighting at Rarańcza on 17 June. We have not been able to establish from the sources what happened on that day. By the Julian calendar, which the Russians used, the battle lasted from 30 May to 2 June.

Background

In the winter of 1915 the units of the future Second Brigade fought in the Eastern Carpathians during the great battle for the passes, and the legionaries’ capture of Kirlibaba opened the way to the recapture of Czernowitz. In mid-March the exhausted battalions were withdrawn to rest at Kolomyia. Some of the men were sent to the Kingdom of Poland, where they became the nucleus of the 4th Infantry Regiment. According to the book Szlakiem bojowym Legionów (“On the Legions’ battle trail”), published by the brigade’s officers in Lviv in 1915, the rest, about 6,000 men, were sent in April to the Bukovina–Bessarabia border. The brigade consisted of the 2nd (PL) and 3rd Infantry Regiments (PL), two squadrons of uhlans and artillery. According to Tym it received the number of the Second Brigade on 15 April; Polish Wikipedia gives 8 May. Its commander was the Austrian Colonel Ferdinand Küttner (PL), who knew no Polish, and its chief of staff the Hungarian Captain Karol Vagas. The brigade came under General Ignaz Korda’s XI Corps of General Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin’s group.

Facing it was the Russian Ninth Army of General Platon Lechitsky. Early in the second ten days of May the Russians broke through the defence of the Austro-Hungarian 4th and 42nd Infantry Divisions and forced XI Corps to retreat behind the Prut. The legionaries then guarded the right bank of the river between Czernowitz and Hlinitsa, and the uhlans carried out night raids on the Russian positions. Meanwhile, in the west, the Central Powers had broken the front at Gorlice, and at the beginning of June Lechitsky had to fall back along his whole front. On 8 June the Austrians recaptured Stanisławów. On 5 June the Second Brigade’s two squadrons of uhlans were merged into the II Cavalry Division under Rittmeister Zbigniew Dunin-Wąsowicz (PL).

The advance on Rarańcza

On 8 June XI Corps went over to the attack, which Polish literature calls the Bukovina offensive. The main blow was struck by the 42nd Infantry Division, advancing on Kitsman, Toporivtsi and Klishkivtsi. The Second Brigade covered its right wing and attacked along the Prut through Łużany, Mamajowce and Sadagóra (PL) towards Rarańcza, Rokitna and Sankowce. In the first echelon went two battle groups, under Colonel Zygmunt Zieliński and Major Mieczysław Norwid-Neugebauer (PL). Major Henryk Minkiewicz (PL)’s 3rd Regiment took Łużany, and Zieliński’s group took Mamajowce. Beyond Czernowitz the Prut turns south-east, so the further the brigade advanced, the more it exposed its right wing.

On 11 June the uhlans took Sadagóra on the march, and the infantry reached the road from Sadagóra to Zadobrówka and forced the Russians to retreat. During the night of 11–12 June the cavalry division surprised the Russians on a fortified pass near the hamlet of Szańce and drove them out without loss. On 12 June the infantry took Rarańcza without a fight, but got no further. The Russians held a position from Kalinkowce through Rokitna to Renkowce, on the hills above the Rokitna stream, a left-bank tributary of the Prut. On the slope above the village, by three windmills, they had four lines of trenches, backed by machine guns and field artillery. Zieliński’s group, made up of the 3rd Regiment and the III Battalion of the 2nd Regiment, reached the western edge of Rokitna only in the evening.

The charge at Rokitna

On the morning of 13 June the brigade’s left wing crossed the Rokitna together with the 42nd Division, but its centre and right wing were held up at the stream. When the 42nd Division’s attack stalled, General Korda demanded decisive action from the legionaries. Captain Vagas ignored reports from Zieliński and from Lieutenant Włodzimierz Mężyński, who had replaced the wounded Norwid-Neugebauer, that the infantry could not attack in daylight. At about 12.20 p.m. he summoned Dunin-Wąsowicz and ordered him to attack. According to participants the conversation was heated, and Vagas ended it with the words: “The infantry is ready, so cavalry forward.” The order for the infantry to leave the trenches together with the uhlans most probably did not reach it in time.

At about 1 p.m. the division crossed the stream above the village. The Rittmeister left the 3rd Squadron in reserve and, with the 2nd Squadron, a little over 60 sabres strong, set off at a gallop up the hill. The uhlans jumped the weakly held first line of trenches, then the second and the third, under fire from the front and from both flanks. Because the Austrian batteries were supporting the infantry attack and knew nothing of the charge, their shells also fell on the slope. Dunin-Wąsowicz was killed at the last line of trenches. According to a later order of the Legions Command, only six riders crossed the fourth line. By Tym’s account the charge lasted 13 minutes, by other accounts a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes. The infantry did not move, and the 3rd Squadron was stopped by an order brought from the 3rd Regiment.

Back to the Rokitna

After the charge, quiet fell along the whole sector. In the evening the Russians began preparing to withdraw, and during the night of 13–14 June they abandoned the hills at Rokitna and Sankowce. XI Corps reached the line Ryngacz–Szyszkowce, and during the night of 14–15 June the legionaries made a raid on Dynowiec. On 15 June, however, the corps command ordered the troops back to the hills on the right bank of the Rokitna. The Second Brigade took over a sector at Rarańcza 6–7 kilometres wide, reaching the southern edge of Toporivtsi. The same day the fallen uhlans were buried in 15 coffins in the cemetery at Rarańcza.

Casualties

The figures for the squadron’s losses vary from source to source. According to Tym, of the 65 participants in the charge 49 were lost. 14 were killed in the charge, one died of wounds a few hours later, 28 were seriously wounded and 9 were taken prisoner, two of whom were recaptured by a patrol of the 3rd Squadron. 25 horses were killed and 22 wounded. The book Szlakiem bojowym Legionów of 1915 wrote that of sixty riders only twenty came back unwounded, fifteen fell and eight went missing. Radio Kraków gives 15 killed and 27 wounded out of about 70 uhlans. Three officers were killed: Dunin-Wąsowicz, the commander of the 2nd Squadron Lieutenant Jerzy Topór-Kisielnicki (PL) and Second Lieutenant Roman Włodek (PL). Some of the uhlans were killed by their own artillery’s fire. The sources we have been able to consult do not total the infantry’s losses in the fighting for Rokitna, and Russian losses are not known.

Significance

Militarily the battle changed little. The Russians came down from the hills at Rokitna, but two days later XI Corps itself went back behind the stream, and the Second Brigade stayed on that sector of the front until October, when it was moved to Volhynia. The judgement of the charge was disputed from the start. The brigade’s daily order explained the lack of result by “unfortunate circumstances”, and later writers blamed Vagas, the lack of co-operation with the infantry and artillery, and in part the Rittmeister himself.

The legend of the charge, however, was born at once. On 24 June Küttner decorated its participants, and on 28 June the Legions Command in Piotrków issued an order according to which the charge of the 2nd Squadron “henceforth stands worthily beside Somosierra”. The uhlans were compared to the light horsemen of Somosierra (PL), all the more so because an ancestor of Dunin-Wąsowicz, Mikołaj, had charged at Somosierra in 1808. In 1917 the Rokitna Cross was instituted. In 1923 the remains of the fallen were brought to Kraków, Józef Piłsudski decorated the coffins with the cross of the Virtuti Militari, and they were buried in the Rakowicki Cemetery. The squadron’s tradition was taken over by the 2nd Rokitna Light Horse Regiment (PL), and Wojciech Kossak (PL) painted the charge in 1934. The infantry’s fighting at Rarańcza was overshadowed by this legend. The brigade returned to the “well-known” Bessarabian front in the autumn of 1917, and in November it again took over the trenches at Rarańcza.