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Cavalryman and officer of the Polish 18th Uhlan Regiment
Which was started by Italian journalists and then successively embellished.
Polish 18th Uhlan Regiment (Pomorska Cavalry Brigade) versus German 20th Motorised Division. Counterattack by Uhlans, out of the woods adjacent to Krojanty and Nowa Cerkiew, against the German Advance Guard to cover withdrawal of Polish Infantry deployed on that sector of the frontier. The attack began at 5pm, on the 01 September 1939:
“… A broad wave of cavalry, consisting of 250 men, tore over the open field, sabres glinting in the sum; the German infantry, caught off guard, tried to save itself by pulling back. Suddenly, round a bend in the highway, a long column of tanks and motorised troops appeared. At first, in the heat of battle, it went unnoticed by the Uhlans. The Poles were then hit by a hail of fire from the armoured cars, and before they were even able to turn their horses, the carnage began… In the space of a few moments, half the Uhlans had been hit… With this cavalry charge at Krojanty on September 1, 1939, was born the legend of the Polish cavalry, armed only with sabres, challenging the German Panzers… …the Polish Uhlans were not bent on suicide… …nor was it a deliberate move on their part to launch a direct attack on tanks. Needless to say, there were several other cavalry attacks [in the campaign] on German infantry which led the Germans to call in tank reinforcements; what is more, there were some cases of Polish Cavalry being attacked by tanks.”
From: The Cavalry of World War II (Janusz Piekalkiewicz).
Apart from countless battles and skirmishes in which the Polish cavalry units used the infantry tactics, there were 16 confirmed cavalry charges during the 1939 war. Contrary to common belief, most of them were successful.
The first of them, and perhaps the best known, happened on September 1, 1939, during the Battle of Krojanty. During the action, elements of the Polish 18th Uhlan Regiment met a large group of German infantry resting in the woods near the village of Krojanty. Colonel Mastalerz decided to take the enemy by surprise and immediately ordered a cavalry charge, a tactic the Polish cavalry rarely used as their main weapon. The charge was successful and the German infantry unit was dispersed.
The same day, German war correspondents were brought to the battlefield together with two journalists from Italy. They were shown the battlefield, the corpses of Polish cavalrymen and their horses, alongside German tanks that had arrived at the field of battle only after the engagement. One of the Italian correspondents sent home an article, in which he described the bravery and heroism of Polish soldiers, who charged German tanks with their sabres and lances. Other possible source of the myth is a quote from Heinz Guderian’s memoirs, in which he asserted that the Pomeranian Brigade had charged on German tanks with swords and lances.[3] Although such a charge did not happen and there were no tanks used during the combat, the myth was disseminated by German propaganda during the war with a staged Polish cavalry charge shown in their 1941 reel called “Geschwader Lützow”. In that movie Luftwaffe Avia 534B trainer planes of Czech origin acted as Polish PZL-11 fighters. After the end of World War II the same fraud was again being disseminated by Soviet propaganda as an example of the stupidity of Polish commanders and authorities, who allegedly did not prepare their country for war and instead wasted the blood of their soldiers.
