Dear Editor:
In reference to “Ukrainians at Sadowa. A historical investigation” (November 8), as a child of the third Ukrainian Galician immigration wave to the U.S.A., I can relate to Andrew Sorokowski’s article on one’s forbearers fighting in foreign imperial wars. I, too, feel obligated to write down fragments of memory passed down within my family and share it with the community.
I remember my maternal grandfather, Volodymyr Nazarewycz, who served as chetar (lieutenant) in the 5th Sotnia of the Ukrainian Galician Army telling me that his ancestor, my (x7) g-grandfather fought in the Battle of Austerlitz, a.k.a. the Battle of the Three Emperors, on December 2, 1805. It was the greatest victory achieved by Napoleon: the Grande Armée of France defeated a larger Russian and Austrian army led by Emperor Alexander I and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II.
This g-grandfather served in the Austrian Army, which at that time was, strictly speaking, the armed force of the Holy Roman Empire (Latin: Exercitus Imperii) under its last monarch, the Habsburg Emperor Francis II.
The key feature of the Austrian Empire’s army was that, due to the multinational nature of its territories, regiments were split into units recruited from throughout the empire. Ruthenian, i.e. Ukrainian, conscripts were drawn from the crown land of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.
The same Galician-Ukrainian regiments that comprised the Austro-Hungarian army in 1918 eventually formed the nucleus of the Ukrainian Galician Army, which helped establish the short-lived Western Ukrainian National Republic. My grandfather was one of those soldiers.
Adrian Baranetsky, M.D.
Short Hills, N.J.