Polish September Campaign
The division, without the 19th Infantry Regiment (which had been transferred to the Pomorze Army), was in early September 1939 transported to the area of the fortress of Modlin. This part of Poland was regarded as crucial in Polish defensive plans, because of the Wehrmacht's advance towards Warsaw from Eastern Prussia. The Division was ordered to hold such locations as Zegrze, suburbs of Modlin and the line of the Narew river.
First contact with the enemy took place in the night of September 11–12, when the Germans began crossing the Narew between Zegrze and Serock. Polish troops were trying to halt the Wehrmacht, but without success. On September 13, the enemy crossed the Narew near the village of Debe and quickly advanced towards Warsaw. Soon afterwards, the Division was destroyed and its remnants withdrew to the Polish capital.
Read more about this topic: 5th Infantry Division (Poland)
Famous quotes containing the words polish, september and/or campaign:
“The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is ... remarkable ... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.”
—Frances Trollope (1780–1863)
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The winter is to a woman of fashion what, of yore, a campaign was to the soldiers of the Empire.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)