The Kosciuszko Squadron

This is the true story of a group of the bravest men you’ve never heard of. These men were American aviators who volunteered to fight in the Polish-Russian War of 1919-1920. None of them were of Polish ancestry but they fought with such bravery and heroism that they were awarded Poland’s highest military honors. Three of them died defending a country they had no ties to.

 The story actually begins 143 years earlier during the American Revolutionary War. A 30-year-old Polish army captain named Tadeusz Kosciuszko arrived in America and volunteered to fight in the newly formed Army of the United States. He was assigned to the staff of General Horatio Gates as a colonel of engineers and distinguished himself as a brilliant combat tactician. He later served under General Nathaniel Green where he led an attack against a British foraging party on James Island, South Carolina in 1782, in what was considered to be the final military action of the war. In 1783, Kosciuszko was awarded with the official thanks of Congress and a brevet commission of brigadier general. He then sailed back to his native Poland and became a commander in the Polish army.

 Flash forward to 1919: World War I had just ended but the newly restored Republic of Poland was under attack on two fronts. In the north, the Bolshevik Army began a push to occupy Poland in an attempt to spread their Communist ideals westward. In the south, the newly independent country of Ukraine took over the town of Lwow. The citizens of Lwow fought and died bravely in house-to-house fighting and eventually regained control of their town.

A young American Air Service officer, Captain Merian Coldwell Cooper, who was now a member of the American Relief Administration, was dispatched from Paris to attempt delivery of badly needed rations to Lwow and the surrounding district. Captain Cooper had fought bravely from the air during World War I and was shot down behind German lines in 1918 and spent the remaining weeks of the war in a German prison hospital. For that mission, he was recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross, which he respectfully declined. In a letter to the chief of the Decorations Section of the A.E.F. he wrote, “I realize it would be unjust and unfair for me to receive any honor consideration which the six other officers who fell in flames in the same flight, and so died, did not receive.”

Captain Cooper’s experiences in Lwow convinced him that Poland was in desperate need of military assistance. He resigned his commission from the U.S. Air Service and offered to join the Polish Air Force. Back in Paris, he began recruiting other American pilots who had not yet returned to the United States following the Armistice. He enlisted 7 other pilots who all signed a contract for service with the Premier of Poland, Jan Paderewski. The unit was unofficially dubbed the Kosciuszko Squadron in honor of the young officer who had fought so bravely for the United States. On September 16, 1919, the squadron boarded a boxcar posing as Red Cross guards and began their long journey to Warsaw. A 143 year old debt was about to be repaid.

Captain Cooper’s volunteers were soon joined by 3 others and were assigned to the Seventh Fighter Squadron stationed in Lwow. The Squadron’s name was officially changed to the Kosciuszko Squadron and was placed under the command of Cedric Errol Fauntleroy, a 28-year-old A.E.F. pilot from Fayette, Mississippi. Before the Americans arrived, the Seventh Squadron had received a shipment of a dozen Albatros D.III airplanes. Before this shipment, the Polish Air Force had been forced to scavenge parts from abandoned German hangars and literally put together one plane at a time using parts from many different planes. The squadron began training in the Albatroses and after a series of setbacks which included the death of one pilot in a crash, a fire which destroyed some of their equipment and an unbearably cold Polish winter, they began flying missions in January of 1920. The first few missions consisted of delivering messages via airplane to the advance base of the Polish forces some 80 miles away. However, the bad weather in January and February caused several crashes and a fire started by Bolshevik saboteurs almost totally destroyed the air base on February 4^th which resulted in the loss of a plane and a spare engine.

 The squadron did not participate in actual combat until April, when the base of operations was moved to a location closer to the fighting. A flight of five Albatros D.IIIs attacked a Red Army encampment on April 9 and the squadron now had their appetite whetted for what lay ahead. From that point forward until the end of the war, the squadron consistently engaged the enemy despite adverse operating conditions, which included a lack of spare parts, food, equipment and even pilots. On July 13, Captain Cooper’s airplane never returned from a reconnaissance mission and he was presumed dead. His fate was not known for nine months. The squadron played a major role in the climactic phase of the war when they engaged Bolshevik forces during the battle for Warsaw, which allowed Polish troops to gain the final victory. An armistice was signed on October 18, 1920, which technically ended the war, but the Kosciuszko Squadron continued to fly reconnaissance missions over the disintegrating front lines for several more weeks. 3 pilots lost their lives in the fighting: Captain Arthur H. Kelly, Captain T.V. McCallum and Lt. Edmund Graves. All of the surviving pilots who served in the active fighting received Poland’s highest award for valor, the Virtuti Militari and the Polish people erected a shrine of honor in the cemetery where the 3 dead pilots were buried.

There was one unfinished piece of business: the fate of Captain Cooper who was, for the second time in his life, presumed killed in battle. However, on April 26, 1921, nine months after disappearing, Cooper showed up in Riga and reported for duty to the Poles. Cooper then told his amazing story of survival. His plane had been shot down and he was captured behind enemy lines by Cossacks. He managed to convince them that he was a conscripted soldier and not an officer of the hated Eskadra Kosciuszkowska. This saved him from an immediate execution. He gave them a fake name and was thrown into a Russian prison camp where he suffered from hunger, freezing temperatures, hard labor and eventually developed typhus. He managed to escape from his guards near Moscow while on a railroad work detail and with the help of two Poles who escaped with him made his way back to friendly territory. On May 8^th, Cooper was reunited with his Kosciuszko Squadron comrades in Warsaw. The squadron was officially demobilized on May 11. Captain Cooper returned to the United States and became a movie producer. His screen credits include “King Kong”, “Little Women” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.” He died in 1973.

My source for this article was the book Flight Of Eagles by Robert F. Karolevitz and Ross S. Fenn, written in 1974. The book was pieced together from diaries, logbooks and personal papers of the men who fought in the Kosciuszko Squadron. I read the book several years ago and have often wondered what motivated these men to do what they did. Did they want to be heroes or did they just enjoy the adventurous life of a pilot? Whatever the reason, they deserve honor and respect for their accomplishments. Hopefully, their story will inspire others to fight for “lost causes” and to do their best to help those who can’t help themselves.