Voluntary Legion of Women

On 28 November 1918, after a call for recruits had appeared in the Lviv press, many women came to the assembly point wanting to serve in the new Women’s Citizens’ Militia. Most of them, as Wanda Kiedrzyńska wrote, were “teachers, office workers, students, pupils of the gymnasium and the teachers’ seminary”. The idea for the unit came from Aleksandra Zagórska, who a week earlier had lost her son in the fighting for the city. In December this militia grew into the Voluntary Legion of Women (Ochotnicza Legia Kobiet), the first women’s military formation in the Polish lands. The dates of its founding are given differently. Some accounts take 28 November as the Legion’s beginning, others 29 November. The IPN historian Anna Marcinkiewicz-Kaczmarczyk dates the formal creation of the militia to the beginning of December, and the decision to create the Legion to December, taking effect in the last days of the month.

The couriers

Women had taken part in the defence of Lviv from the first day. They organised help for the soldiers and first-aid posts, and in time the Supreme Command of the Defence of Lviv began to use them for communications and intelligence. Zagórska, an activist of the Polish Women’s Citizens’ Committee, in her youth a fighter in the PPS Combat Organisation and before the war a member of the Riflemen’s Association, set up a courier and intelligence unit. It came under the Polish Recruitment Command of Captain Wit Sulimirski (PL) and at first had seventeen women. The couriers carried orders and reports, brought volunteers across from the part of the city held by the Ukrainians, distributed the Polish press, and some carried explosives and weapons. Zagórska was not the first to organise such a service: as early as 1914 Aleksandra Szczerbińska had led a women’s intelligence and courier unit of the Legions.

Between 10 and 17 women, according to various estimates, took part directly in the street fighting, some of them dressed as men. The couriers Stanisława Paleolog and Felicja Sulimirska, Captain Sulimirski’s niece, were wounded; Sulimirska died on 22 November. Nurses were killed too. On 21 November, the day of the Polish attack, Zagórska’s son, the Scout Jerzy Bitschan, not yet fourteen, was killed at the Łyczakowski Cemetery. “When they brought me my son’s coat and his rucksack, shot through in several places, at first I wanted to put it on and join the ranks of the Polish army,” Zagórska recalled years later.

Militia and Legion

The capture of Lviv by the Poles on 22 November did not end the war. The Ukrainians surrounded the city on three sides, and the Polish army was short of men. Zagórska wanted to create a formation made up entirely of women, to be joined by the couriers and by volunteers from the front. The military command in Lviv treated her plan dismissively, so she turned to Sulimirski, who now commanded the Municipal Citizens’ Guard. The men’s militia lacked both numbers and enthusiasm, so the captain accepted the proposal. The command of the Women’s Citizens’ Militia was given rooms belonging to the Committee for the Defence of Polish Women, and barracks in the “Sokół” building. Sulimirski gave the volunteers weapons and an instructor. The militiawomen stood guard, above all at the stores and the artillery park on the High Castle, served as couriers, kept order during food distribution and brought men evading military service before the draft board. On 14 December there were 64 of them, and by 19 December already 132. On 27 December about thirty militiawomen from the combat group were sent to positions at Krzywczyce, where they exchanged fire with the Ukrainians for the first time.

In December, at a meeting attended by the city commander, Colonel Marian Jasiński, and Captain Sulimirski, it was decided to turn the militia into a military formation, quartered in barracks, armed and uniformed, under the name Voluntary Legion of Women. In March 1919 its status in the Polish Army was approved by Józef Piłsudski. The legionnaires mainly did guard and administrative duty, but when necessary they were sent to the front. About 400 women passed through the Legion during the fighting for Lviv. In 1919 a second Legion was formed in Wilno, and in 1920, during the war with the Bolsheviks, the formation numbered about 2,500 volunteers, and in August its front-line battalion manned positions in the Warsaw bridgehead. The Legion was disbanded in 1922.