KRZECZUNOWICZ Kornel - The Last Horse Campaign. The actions of the Polish Army against Budienny's horse army in 1920 [first edition London 1971].

London 1971 Catholic Veritas Publishing Center. Series: red "Polish Library", volume 73. 12.5x19 cm, pp. 377, VI, black and white photographs and sketches in the text, 4 fold-out appendices at the end of the book, hard cloth cover with wrapper. Very good condition.

First edition. The foreword was written by Stanislaw Kopanski. The wrapper with a reproduction of a painting by Jerzy Kossak was designed by Bohdan Żarkowski.

"This book is not an ordinary war memoir. It presents us with a completely unique and already almost forgotten type of fighting, probably unique in future wars since the motorcycle gained the upper hand over the horse on the battlefield. (...) The author describes (...) the actions of the sparse Polish cavalry, whose task (apart from the initial drive on Koziatyn and the final drive on Korosteń) was to stop the fierce attacks of Budienny's horse army; in this campaign all major battles and battles were fought on horseback, fought exclusively with white weapons, sometimes assisted only by a pistol. The author leads the reader from the banks of the Sluga River, through the enchantingly beautiful, blossoming and singing spring steppes and ravines of Ukraine, all the way to Kaniow on the Dnieper River and to Korsun on the Russian River - and back again, under sadder conditions, when six crumbling regiments of cavalry tried for three months to hold back the avalanche of a twenty-six-member mounted army breaking the Polish front every few days. Only the Miracle on the Vistula brings a complete change of position - Budienny's pogrom in the three-day battle of Zamosc, in the day-long battle of Komarow, the largest mounted battle since 1813." [excerpt from publisher's note]