Legions capture Polish Hill

On 10 November 1915, after several hours of fierce fighting, legionaries of the Second Brigade, together with Hungarian and Austrian units, took the strongly fortified Russian positions near the village of Kostiuchnówka in Volhynia. The main objective was a hill with trig point 195.45, known as Brickworks Hill. Five days earlier a first assault on the same hill had broken down under machine-gun fire. Their German comrades-in-arms later named it Polenberg, that is, Polish Hill.

The Russian attack

At the end of September legionaries of the 1st Regiment (PL) had entered Kostiuchnówka for the first time, but had to withdraw from it. The Russians held the crossings over the Styr and in October broke through the front several times. The Polish Legions plugged the gaps, among other places at Kukle and Kamieniucha. At the end of October the Second Brigade of Colonel Ferdynand Küttner (PL) arrived from Bessarabia. Its soldiers were unloaded at Manevychi (PL) station and sent straight into the fighting around Wołczeck and Wielka Miedwieża. The 2nd Regiment (PL) attacked on 3 November but, without support from the neighbouring Austro-Hungarian units, failed to reach its objective.

On the night of 3–4 November the Russians launched a violent attack on Kostiuchnówka. When an Austro-Hungarian brigade withdrew, the flank of the 6th Regiment (PL) was exposed. At the critical moment the staff company of the Legions Command and makeshift detachments of orderlies, clerks, cooks and workshop soldiers were thrown into the front line. Polish counter-attacks went on from the evening of 4 November throughout the following day. Holding the Russians gave the Austrian command time to prepare a counter-stroke. The date of 4 November 1915 is commemorated today by a tablet on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.

Two assaults

The weight of the attack was to fall on the 2nd and 3rd Regiments (PL) of the Second Brigade. The commander of the 3rd Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Henryk Minkiewicz (PL), warned that a frontal assault on positions protected by barbed wire and defended by machine guns would end in disaster. The Legions Command rejected his objections. On 5 November the attack broke down under machine-gun and artillery fire, and the losses in killed, wounded and shell-shocked reached half the strength of the attacking companies. According to the historian Marek Dutkiewicz, detached companies of the 5th and 7th Regiments of the First Brigade also went in to this attack. When all the stretcher-bearers had been killed or wounded, the doctor Marian Wowkonowicz himself gathered and evacuated more than a hundred wounded during the night. The dead were buried in the village cemetery at Wołczeck. On the night of 7–8 November the Russians struck the rear of the 2nd Regiment near Bielgów and captured the staff of a battalion dressing station. Beating off this attack cost the regiment about 200 men.

The second assault was carefully prepared. Hungarian and Austrian units were sent into battle alongside the Poles. Companies of the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Regiment and the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Regiment advanced along the road from Wielka Miedwieża to Kostiuchnówka, supported by nearly a hundred guns of various calibres and a battery of bomb throwers. Reserves were also made ready. On 10 November, after several hours of fighting, the hill and the Kostiuchnówka area were taken. Soldiers of the 3rd Regiment also drove the Russians out of the wood behind the hill. An outline history of the 3rd Regiment gives 9 November as the day Kostiuchnówka was taken.

Polish Hill

It was one of the Legions’ last battles of 1915. In the second half of November the fighting died down, and the front settled west of the Styr. The legionaries began building dugouts, shelters and wire entanglements. Through the winter they held a sector more than ten kilometres long, from Optowa to Kostiuchnówka. The autumn battles won them the respect of their allies. The Germans named hill 195.45 Polish Hill, the nearby copse Polish Wood, and the footbridge over the Garbach stream Polish Bridge. In July 1916 the same places became the field of the Legions’ greatest battle.