Wacław Przeździecki

Who was Wacław Przeździecki?

Wacław Przeździecki was a Polish military commander and Brigadier General of the Polish Army. During the Invasion of Poland in 1939, he was the commanding officer of the reserve Wołkowysk Cavalry Brigade that fought in the battle of Grodno.

Wacław Jan Przeździecki was born July 15, 1883 in Leśmierz near Łęczyca, to a family of old Polish gentry of Pierzchała Coat of Arms, deprived of all their property by the Russian authorities after the January Uprising. In 1903 he graduated from the Higher Trade School in Łódź, after which he joined the Technological Institute in Kharkov. In 1904 he was relegated from the institute for being a member of a secret Polish resistance organisation. The only school to accept him was a military college in Kazan, from which he graduated in 1906. Przeździecki then joined the Imperial Russian Army and served as an adjutant in the officers school and the 260th Infantry Regiment stationed in Batum.

In 1913 he was promoted to the rank of Captain. During the Great War he served with distinction in the first line as the company and then battalion commander. After receiving a heavy wound in Prussia, he was declared ineligible for service and dismissed. After the February Revolution he joined various Polish organisations in Russia, including the Central Polish Military Committee, and fought in the ranks of the 1st Polish Corps during the Russian Civil War. In 1918 he returned to Poland and joined the renascent Polish Army. As the commanding officer of the Polish 12th Infantry Division he fought in the Polish-Bolshevik War. After the Peace of Riga he remained in service at various staff posts. In 1926 he became the commanding officer of the Polish 21st Mountain Infantry Division and the following year he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. Retired in 1936, he settled in a small villa in Natolin, several kilometres to the south of Warsaw.