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“The Best Cossacks Left Their Kurens…”

Today is Memory Day of Russian soldiers died in the First World War (1914 – 1918).

M.A.Sholokhov on the pages of his novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” paid tribute to those, who did not return from the battlefields of that war, having found for this the words full of deep sorrow: “The stanitsas and villages in the Don region got depopulated, as if the whole Don country came out for a mowing, hay making campaign. 

On the borders, a bitter drudgery broke out that year… Dear people laid their heads on all four sides, they shed their Cossack red blood and they, dead-eyed, unabashed, were decaying accompanied by an artillery requiem in Austria, in Poland, in Prussia ...

The best Cossacks left their kurens and perished there, in death, in lice, in horror”.

Also, the writer brightly depicts the first message about the war brought by a horse messenger to the Cossacks working in the field. Hearing his cry “Spolokh!” the people gave up grain harvesting, pulled the horses out of the mowers and galloped to the village to speed up the gathering. In the Cossack country mobilization is the fastest. “Enemy is at the gate!”

Only from the Don region there set out 113742 warriors for the fronts of the German War, i.e. 12.5% of the male Cossack population. No other territorial-administrative unit of the Empire could withstand such a military load. For example, the share of conscription from the non-Cossack territories of Russia was 4.2%.

To fight back the enemy, the Don Cossack army formed 2 guards and 54 army regiments of 6 units (of hundreds), 1 guards battery and 21 army 6-gun batteries, 36 separate units (of hundreds) and 71 special units (of hundreds) and several local teams.

The confrontation lasted about 4 long years. 193 Don officers and 37 thousand Cossacks were awarded the St. George Prizes.

Over the years of the war, its participants saw everything: the use of tanks, aircrafts, armored trains, the use of chemical warfare gases ... The data vary, but Russia’s losses can be estimated at more than 11 million people.

It is believed that the losses of the Cossacks in the First World War were not big due to the excellent training and high moral and combat qualities of the personnel of the units, regiments and batteries. Nevertheless, there were losses, and for the Don people they amounted to:

• killed - 182 officers and 3444 Cossacks
• wounded and shell-shocked - 777 officers and 11898 Cossacks
• captured - 32 officers and 132 Cossacks
• missing - 54 officers and 2453 Cossacks.

On the memory day of the heroes of the war 1914-1918, let’s remember our fellow countrymen, all the compatriots who fought honestly, who showed their courage, who did not spare their lives remaining faithful to the military duty.

Alexey Kochetov