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World's last calvary regiment
defiant at reunion
From CHARLES J. GANS,
in Warsaw
]POLAND's famed Carpathian
lanccrs, survivors of hopelessly
valiant horseback chargcs against
the Nazi blitzkrieg, have an
swered what may be their last
bugle call.
About 30 elderly, grey-haired
veterans from Poland and Aus
tralia, who made up the last regu
lar cavalry regiment in World
War II, stood for the roll call one
more time during an emotional
reunion in a Warsaw church re
cently.
"They are fallen on the field of
glory, they are fallen in the ser
vice of the fatherland," recited
300 worshippers led by the lancer
veterans, most in their 60s and
70s, at the reunion at Our Lady
of Czestochowa church.
"We are already fading away
and our ranks arc dwindling, so
we have to rush now to pass over
to young Poles the best tradition
of the Polish cavalry — faithful
ness to God, honour and
country," Mr Zbigniew
Wolynski, the ceremony's or
ganiser, said.
"We all were fighting for Po
land but the fight didn't end and
they [the youth] have to carry
on," he said.
Only 76 of the 1,200 men in the
6th Lancers regiment from Mr
Woiynski's home town of
Stanislawow, near Lvov, then in
eastern Poland but now part of
the USSR, reached the besieged
city of Warsaw three weeks later.
The rest were killed, wounded or
captured.
Mr Woiynski's horse was shot
from under him during the last
charge by the cavalry on Polish
soil on September 24 when about
250 lancers from battered regi
ments broke through German
lines in the western outskirts of
Warsaw despite heavy machine
gun fire from armoured cars.
Three days later the Polish capi
tal fell.
"We knew what we were
doing," he said. "We were dying
for our country."
After escaping from a German
prisoner-of-war camp in Decem
ber, 1939, Mr Wolynski made his
way through Hungary and Yugo
slavia before catching a boat to
French Syria. In April, 1940, the
Polish Carpathian lancers regi
ment was formed in Syria out of
about 500 Poles who had fled
from occupied Europe.
When France fell two months
later, the Poles escaped French
internment orders by comman
deering armoured cars, horses
and a train. They received a
hero's welcome when they ar
rived in British Palestine.
After patrolling on horseback
in Egypt, the lancers were con
verted into a motorised regiment
in August, 1941.
When the regiment was de
mobilised in England in 1947,
most of the Poles chose to remain
in the West.
At the end of the Mass, Mr
Wolynski stepped to the altar to
unveil the memorial plaque and
address the congregation.
Borrowing the words of the Sol
idarity song, Wolynski said to
loud applause, "I beg you to
pray ... So that Poland can be
Poland."
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