Turning the pages back... May 20, 1883 (05/17/98)

Turning the pages back...

May 20, 1883

Alfred Schamanek was an ethnic German born in Lviv on May 20, 1883. A graduate of the Austrian imperial military academy in Vienna, when World War I broke out, he was a captain on the Austrian Army's General Staff in Galicia.

Several transfers placed him, first, on the Italian front and, later, as chief of staff of the Austrian Auxiliary Corps, in Syria.

After the capitulation of Austria's forces in November 1918, he made his way back to Galicia, and was recruited by the Ukrainian Galician Army (Ukraiinska Halytska Armiia - UHA) as one of the many Austro-Hungarian specialists and officers who were sought to alleviate the army's dire shortage of officers.

In April 1919, Schamanek was assigned to the staff of Col. Myron Tarnavsky of the UHA's Second Corps, promoted to the rank of colonel, and in June took part in the Chortkiv offensive against the Polish Army, which had pushed into eastern Galicia, establishing the Brody-Zolota Lypa Line.

In the two weeks following, the UHA forced the Poles to retreat to within 40 kilometers of Lviv, but then began running out of ammunition. Polish troops commanded by Joszef Pilsudski mounted their decisive counteroffensive, and by July 15 the UHA's forces were forced to quit the area and cross the Zbruch to join the Ukrainian National Republic Army led by Symon Petliura.

Schamanek then served as chief of the General Staff on the anti-Bolshevik front, relieving Gen. Viktor Kurmanovych, who quit over disagreements in strategy. Reunited with Gen. Tarnavsky, Schamanek led the UHA's successful advance on Kyiv, with victories over the Red Army in Vinnytsia (August 12), Berdychiv (August 19) and Zhytomyr (August 21).

Ten days after the Zhytomyr engagement, Schamanek's troops entered Kyiv, but found themselves confronted by the Russian Volunteer Army's Gen. Anton Denikin.

Gen. Tarnavsky concluded a truce with the tsarist military leader, but the UNR leadership found this arrangement politically unacceptable. This and other disagreements led to Schamanek's removal from the senior UHA post. At this point, the record of his service becomes as confused as the era in which it occurred, as military anarchy combined with a raging typhus epidemic to plunge the UHA's fighting strength from a peak of 35,000 in August to 5,000 in December.

In February 1920 the UHA was forced to join the Red Army as a semi-autonomous unit known as the "Red UHA," and set up to fight against the expected Polish advance, with Col. Schamanek as chief of general staff. In April 1920 the Red UHA's second and third brigades deserted.

Col. Schamanek was either killed in subsequent action against the Bolsheviks or was executed in a Bolshevik retaliation against officers for the desertion in May 1920, at an undetermined location in Ukraine.

Sources: "Red Ukrainian Galician Army," "Schamanek, Alfred," "Ukrainian Galician Army," "Ukrainian-Soviet War," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 4, 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).