Serving with the
27th Rifle Division, between October 1919 and April 1920 he graduated from a
heavy machine gun course. During the
Polish-Soviet War he managed to evade captivity following his division's destruction at
Kobryn. Between 1922 and 1924 he studied at the Smolensk Military Academy and was promoted to the rank of
second lieutenant. He spent the remainder of the 1920s as an infantry platoon commanding officer in various Red Army regiments. Gradually rising through the ranks, in 1934 he was promoted to the rank of regimental chief of staff. Considered to be a promising officer, in 1938 Waszkiewicz was sent to the Moscow-based
M. V. Frunze Military Academy where he served as both a student and the head of a teaching department. He graduated in 1942.
World War II On 15 August 1942 Waszkiewicz became the commanding officer of the front-line 793rd Rifle Regiment of the
213th Rifle Division (Reformed). Between 2 and 15 February 1943 he commanded the 182nd Mountain Rifle Regiment of the
68th Mountain Rifle Division and on 22 June 1943 he became the commanding officer of the 797 Rifle Regiment of the
232nd Rifle Division (Reformed). He served in that capacity until 23 July 1944, when Waszkiewicz was promoted to the rank of Colonel and became the deputy commander of the
116th Rifle Division (Reformed). In September 1944 Waszkiewicz, a Soviet officer of Polish descent, was attached to the Soviet-controlled
People's Army of Poland as the first commanding officer of the newly formed
5th Infantry Division. On 3 November 1944 he was promoted to the rank of
generał brygady ("brigadier general") by the communist
State National Council. With his 5th Division, Waszkiewicz took part in the ill-fated Lusatian Offensive and the
Battle of Bautzen in April 1945. In the course of the battle the division suffered severe casualties and on 21 April 1945 its headquarters was surrounded by a German counter-attack in the village of
Tauer. His corpse was discovered in a forest near
Stiftswiese near
Hohendubrau only on 4 May 1945. He was buried with military honours at Warsaw's
Powązki Military Cemetery and promoted posthumously to the rank of Major General of the USSR. He received the status of the
Hero of the Soviet Union on 28 October 1943 for his actions during the crossing of the
Dneper earlier that year. He also received the
Virtuti Militari (posthumously). ==Personal life==