The 4th Rifle Division could trace its origins to the
Polish 2nd Corps in Russia. The 2nd Corps was formed from various Polish units, but primarily the
2nd Brigade of the
Polish Legions in World War I, which rebelled against the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and decided to join the newly-forming
Polish army and help secure the territories inhabited by the Poles in the
Kresy region. The
Polish 5th Rifle Division found itself fighting in the northern territories of the former
Russian Empire; the 4th, in its southern regions. The ever-changing and chaotic currents of the
Russian Civil War, coupled with the weak
chain of command of the newly reborn Polish Army, meant that the local commanders had much autonomy; thus the 2nd Corps found it most useful to ally itself with the forces of the
White movement, even though Polish
commander-in-chief Józef Piłsudski declined to support the Whites with any other units after he had established firm control over the Polish forces in 1919. Nonetheless this meant that the soldiers of the 2nd Corps were fighting the
Bolsheviks and their
Red Army even before the
Polish-Soviet War began in 1919. After the
Battle of Kaniów on 11 May 1918, in which the forces of the 2nd Brigade broke through the
front and created the 2nd Corps, the Polish commanders entered the alliance with one of the White generals,
Mikhail Alekseev, and his
Volunteer Army in the northern
Caucasus near the
Kuban River. By September 1918 the Polish forces in the region, called the 'Polish Unit of the Volunteer Army', numbered over 700 people under the command of Col.
Franciszek Zieliński, and were engaged in several battles with the Bolsheviks. In October 1918 General
Lucjan Żeligowski assumed command of the Polish forces in the east from General Haller. At the same time, General Alekseev died, and General
Anton Ivanovich Denikin assumed the command of the White forces in the region. The local Polish forces were reorganized into the Polish 4th Rifle Division, subordinated to the
2nd Corps of the
Blue Army of General
Józef Haller. By the end of January 1919 the division numbered over 2800 men, including many from the now-disbanded
Polish 1st Corps in Russia. At that time Piłsudski ordered the Polish units in the far East to move close to the core Polish territory. Denikin, who received this order through
French General
Ferdinand Foch, ordered Żeligowski to move to
Odessa, a major port west of
Crimea. Żeligowski reorganized and strengthened the units in the area, and in December 1918 he found himself facing the
Ukrainian forces of
Symon Petlura. Reinforced by French and
Greek troops, it helped to secure Odessa as part of the
Allied Southern Russia Intervention and took part in the fights near
Tiraspol. In March 1919 the unit numbered about 3000 men, including a sizeable
cavalry contingent. By the end of March the division, and the Allied forces, were no longer fighting the Ukrainians, but the Bolsheviks. Żeligowski was able to influence the placement of his unit, and until May the division successfully screened the retreat of Allied troops from Odessa towards the Romanian lines in
Bessarabia. Near the end of May the division was relieved and finally transported to Poland. It was the only major Polish military formation that took part in the Russian Civil War and managed to return to Poland as a functioning unit. The division then took part in the last phase of the ongoing
Polish-Ukrainian War, starting from the area near
Chernivtsi and
Stanyslaviv. This time it was not fighting Petliura (who was soon to become a Polish ally), but one of the other Ukrainian factions, the
West Ukrainian National Republic. From 11 to 13 July the division fought its first (and victorious) battle near a town with a sizeable Polish population in the area,
Jazłowiec. On 19 July 1919 the division was reformed into the
Polish 10th Infantry Division and took part in the major conflict of that time, the
Polish-Soviet War. ==References==