Polish volunteers join the Foreign Legion

On 22 August 1914 more than five hundred Poles set out from the courtyard of the Republican Guard barracks in Paris. They were heading for the Invalides, where army doctors were examining would-be volunteers. Those who passed the examination enlisted for the duration of the war in the Foreign Legion. According to the writer Wacław Gąsiorowski (PL), who ran the enlistment, a hundred and eighty-odd men were accepted that day. The historian Marek Gałęzowski writes of almost two hundred out of about five hundred, and Witold Jarno of about three hundred. They were sent to train at Bayonne (PL), and after that town they became known as the Bayonne men (PL) (bajończycy).

The committee and the Russian veto

The Committee of Polish Volunteers for Service in the French Army, known for short as the Committee of Polish Volunteers, had been founded in Paris on 31 July, before war with France broke out. In the first days of August it called on the Poles in France, émigrés, students, workers and members of the “Sokół” (PL) gymnastic society, to join a Polish legion alongside the French army. According to Jarno, between one thousand and one and a half thousand volunteers came forward by the end of August. They wanted to fight the Germans under their own banner, and they looked back to the memory of the Polish legions once formed alongside France.

Russia would not allow it. The French regarded the Polish question as an internal matter for their ally, and the Russian ambassador Alexander Izvolsky protested against any Polish formation. Russia was courting the Poles in its own way: on 14 August the proclamation of Grand Duke Nicholas had been published. Gąsiorowski described a meeting of representatives of the foreign committees at the Invalides on 20 August. A Russian colonel declared there on the ambassador’s behalf that Russian subjects were to report to the embassy’s military office. The French head of recruitment, however, told the Poles that in the “nationality” column a volunteer would enter the one he claimed as his own. Instead of a legion, then, only the Foreign Legion remained, in which a decree of 3 August allowed foreigners to enlist for the duration of the war. According to Jarno, the enlistment of volunteers, Poles among them, began after a decision by the authorities on 21 August.

The march through Paris

The examinations were cursory. Some men came only for a certificate of unfitness for service, while others hid illnesses and knocked years off their age. Władysław Szujski, an engineer of nearly fifty and the son of the historian Józef Szujski, when asked his occupation, is said to have answered that he was a porter. The doctor shook his hand and accepted him. Those accepted received a few francs’ advance on their pay and orders to leave the next day for the barracks at Bayonne. The column was led by Szujski with a hastily made banner bearing a white eagle, which he had unfurled despite the objections of one of the committee members. The painter Jan Żyznowski recalled that the volunteers marched through Paris in fours, singing “Poland Is Not Yet Lost”, while passers-by shouted: “Vive la Pologne! Vive les volontaires!”.

Gąsiorowski goes on to write that the first detachment left from the goods station “on Sunday, 25 August”, although the Sunday fell on 23 August. According to Żyznowski, the train carrying the Poles and Czech volunteers took 38 hours to reach Bayonne. A further, somewhat larger group of about 250 Poles was sent, according to Gałęzowski, to Rueil (PL) near Paris and dispersed among various companies of the Legion.

The Bayonne men

At Bayonne the Poles formed the 2nd Company of Battalion C of the 2nd Marching Regiment of the 1st Foreign Regiment, almost entirely Polish but with French officers. Training began on 4 September. Harsh instructors, bad food and illness led many volunteers to leave. The company’s banner, a white eagle without a crown on a red field, was designed by the sculptor Xawery Dunikowski (PL) and Żyznowski and embroidered by the women of Bayonne. According to Jarno, the town’s mayor presented it to the Poles in September. The Russian embassy protested again, and later Polish volunteers, whom Gąsiorowski put at about two thousand, were now dispersed among various companies of the Legion. In the second half of October the company of Bayonne men, a little over a hundred strong, left for the front in Champagne. Gałęzowski notes that until the Polish army in France was created in 1917 it was the only compact Polish unit to fight on the Western Front under a banner with the white eagle.