Polish riflemen at Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand

On the night of 24–25 July 1918 the 5th Company of the 1st Polish Rifle Regiment left its trenches near Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand (PL) in Champagne, east of Reims. After a short artillery bombardment it stormed the small wooded hill of Bois de la Raquette, took prisoners and machine guns, and then beat off three German counter-attacks. It paid for this with the death of all its officers. At the time it was the only regiment of the Polish Army in France fighting at the front, and 25 July became its regimental day.

Before Reims

The regiment was commanded by Colonel Julian Jasieński (PL) (also Jasiński in the records), and many volunteers from the Polish community in America served in its ranks. According to the regimental history published in 1928 by the Military Historical Bureau, on 4 June 1918, the anniversary of the decree creating the army, the regiment left its camp at Sommepuis and that night relieved the French 142nd Infantry Regiment in the front line before Reims. The trenches ran through a former German position, a maze of ditches in white chalk, and in places the Germans were only a few dozen metres away. There, and later in the second line near Sept-Saulx, the Poles went out on night raids to take prisoners, raids which, as the regimental history puts it, the exhausted French garrison of the sector could no longer manage. In one of them Second Lieutenant Chwałkowski, a volunteer from America, was gravely wounded. His dying words are said to have been: “it is for Poland”. The President of France awarded him the Legion of Honour before his death. When the Germans learnt that a Polish regiment faced them, they threw leaflets in Polish into the trenches. In June the regiment received a banner funded by Paris.

The peace offensive

On the night of 13–14 July the regiment, part of General Henri Gouraud’s Fourth Army, was ordered to move to the Saint-Hilaire sector in General Naulin’s XXI Corps. At midnight, as its column marched close to the front line, it was caught by a hurricane of German artillery fire. The last great German offensive was beginning. The battalions sat out the bombardment in old trenches and dugouts, and towards morning took up their assigned positions, reinforcing the French infantry and the Chasseurs Alpins. They fought as separate companies, even platoons. The German attack in Champagne broke down that same day. On 22 July the 1st Company took and held a German strongpoint, and the III Battalion advanced 1,200 metres. Under that date the regimental history records the losses: 1 officer and 33 other ranks killed and 312 wounded and gassed. On the same day Colonel Jasieński commended the men in an order for their conduct in the first days of the battle.

Bois de la Raquette

Captain Krzywkowski’s 5th Company, with a platoon of heavy machine guns, approached the hill by night along long trenches in the chalk and attacked in the morning after a short bombardment. Taken by surprise, the Germans of the 66th Infantry Regiment gave up the position. According to the regimental history the Poles took 118 prisoners, among them several Poles, and 20 heavy machine guns. The XXI Corps commander’s order of 29 July speaks of more than 200 prisoners taken by the company. The Germans counter-attacked three times with strong artillery support. All the company’s officers were killed, the last of them a young American, Second Lieutenant Bauer. A sergeant took command, and the riflemen fought with grenades and hand to hand. When the company began to fall back, Captain Piekarski with two platoons retook the hill in a counter-attack and held it until the French arrived. The regimental history puts the losses at 3 officers killed and 3 wounded, and 42 other ranks killed and many wounded. It also observes that a Polish soldier shooting at a German might hit his own brother in the chest.

The company was awarded the Croix de Guerre with a gilt star. General Naulin wrote in his order of 17 August that the Poles had gone into battle in extraordinarily difficult conditions, on the eve of a very strong German attack, and “spared no effort to cover their colours with glory”. The regiment left the front in August and joined the 1st Polish Rifle Division (PL) then being formed. The name of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand was later inscribed on the tablets of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.