The Battle of Mokra was fought on 1 September 19393, the first day of the German invasion of Poland. The Polish Volhynian Cavalry Brigade under Colonel Julian Filipowicz, fighting mostly on foot with anti-tank weapons and the support of an armoured train, held off the much stronger German 4th Panzer Division for a day4, destroying a number of its vehicles before withdrawing at night. It was one of the first Polish successes of the war.
On the first morning of the Second World War, a German armoured division struck a Polish cavalry brigade at the village of Mokra. The cavalrymen did not charge the tanks. They dug in, fought on foot with anti-tank guns, and stopped the Germans for a day.
Cavalry on the frontier
The Volhynian Cavalry Brigade under Colonel Julian Filipowicz was part of the Łódź Army4, covering the approaches near Kłobuck, close to the German border. Like other Polish cavalry of 1939, it was trained to ride to battle and fight on foot, and it had modern anti-tank guns and rifles.
The first attack
On the morning of 1 September 1939 the German 4th Panzer Division, with more than two hundred tanks3, advanced on the brigade's positions around Mokra. The Poles waited until the tanks were close and opened fire with their anti-tank guns and rifles.
Guns, rifles and an armoured train
The brigade's artillery, its 37 mm anti-tank guns and the Ur anti-tank rifles took a heavy toll, and Polish armoured train No. 531 Śmiały fired into the German flanks along the railway line. Attack after attack broke down in the fields and villages around Mokra.
Holding the line
Through the day the Germans renewed their assaults with tanks, infantry and aircraft, but the Polish line held. After dark, with neighbouring units falling back, the brigade withdrew in good order1. It had delayed a panzer division for a full day at the cost of several hundred casualties.
The myth and the reality
German propaganda later spread the myth that Polish cavalry charged tanks3 with lances. The story most likely grew out of a different fight on the same day, at Krojanty in Pomerania. Late on 1 September 1939 the 18th Pomeranian Uhlans under Colonel Kazimierz Mastalerz5 were ordered to counter-attack and then fall back behind the Brda river. On the way they came upon a German infantry battalion that was not ready5 for battle, and charged it on horseback. The Germans broke and ran, until German armoured cars hidden on the flank5 opened fire with heavy machine guns. Colonel Mastalerz was killed in the charge6. There were no tanks on the battlefield7. Even so, the regiment did its job: it held up the German advance and caused a confusion that the German commander Heinz Guderian later admitted in his memoirs, and on 2 September it was awarded the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari5.
The myth came afterwards. By the time German and Italian war correspondents reached the field8, German tanks had arrived, and the dead men and horses lying near them were turned into a tale of uhlans charging armour with lances. German propaganda used it as proof of Polish backwardness, and Guderian repeated it in his memoirs6, claiming the Pomeranian Cavalry Brigade had charged German tanks with swords and lances.
At Mokra the reality was different: disciplined cavalrymen, fighting as infantry with modern anti-tank weapons, showed that the German armour could be stopped. The battle is remembered in Poland as one of the proudest moments of the September Campaign.
