Stanisław Grzmot-Skotnicki

Who was Stanisław Grzmot-Skotnicki?

Stanisław Grzmot-Skotnicki was a Polish military commander and a general of the Polish Army. During the Invasion of Poland of 1939 he commanded the Czersk Operational Group and was among the highest ranking Polish officers to be killed in action in that war.

Stanisław Skotnicki was born January 13, 1894 in the village of Skotniki, to a family of Polish nobility. After graduating from a gymnasium in Radom, he was sent to a Trade Academy in Sankt Gallen in Switzerland. There he formed a unit of the Związek Strzelecki and started organizing military training for the Polish emigrees and students. It was then he adopted his nom de guerre of Grzmot, which later formed a part of his surname. Upon the outbreak of the Great War he returned to Poland, to Austro-Hungarian Galicia, where he volunteered for the service in the Polish Legions. In August 1914 he became the member of the famous Belina's Patrol under Władysław Belina-Prażmowski, the first detachment of the Polish Cavalry to cross the border with Privislinsky Krai. Later in the war he served in the cavalry regiment of the Legions, in which he commanded a platoon and then a squadron. After the Oath Crisis of 1917 he was interned in a camp in Beniaminów.