Battle of Kock

The Battle of Kock was fought between 14 and 16 August 1920 in the vicinity of the town of Kock in east-central Poland. The town was to serve as a bridgehead across the Wieprz river for Gen. Józef Piłsudski's counter-offensive against the Russian forces storming Warsaw. However, on 14 August it was captured by forces of the Russian Mozyr Group and the Poles withdrew across the river. In the early morning of 16 August the 21st Mountain Division counter-attacked and retook the town. The battle, while minor, was one of the last skirmishes of the Polish retreat from Belarus that had started in the early summer – and the first of the Wieprz Counter-offensive, the flanking manoeuvre that gave Poland victory in the Warsaw Operation, better known as the Battle of Warsaw. Background Following the failure of the Kiev offensive, the Polish armies retreated westwards from Central Belarus and Ukraine. Although the Bolshevik forces failed to surround or destroy the bulk of the Polish Army, most Polish units were in dire need of fresh reinforcements. The Polish command hoped to halt the advancing Russian forces in front of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. At the same time the Polish Commander-in-Chief, General (later Marshal of Poland) Józef Piłsudski, was to personally lead a flanking manoeuvre with the reinforced 4th Army from the area of the Wieprz River, while General Władysław Sikorski's 5th Army was to leave the Modlin Fortress and head north-east, to cut off the Soviet forces heading westwards, to the north of the bend of the Vistula and Bugonarew, and on towards Pomerania. The forces of the Polish Fourth Army had been engaged in combat with the Russian 16th Army and the Mozyr Group since the bitter fights in central Belarus in the spring and early summer of 1920. On 6 August 1920 it broke away from the enemy and started its rapid fall-back to the Siedlce-Łuków-Kock line for reorganisation. There it was reorganised with reinforcements from the corps-sized Polesie Group and freshly trained forces from behind the front. The reorganisation was partially completed by 10 August. Then the forces of the army started a flank march to the final positions behind the Wieprz river, with the town of Kock serving as a pivot. That boundary line was reached on 12 August, with the 21st Mountain Division holding the town of Kock itself, as well as several villages in the vicinity.