Outbreak of World War I
The first information of the war reached Kalisz when the nearby border with the German Empire was closed at Nowe Skalmierzyce and train movement across the border to Germany was stopped. Russian officials started evacuating the city alongside military personnel. On August 2, 1914, at dawn, the Russian military retreated from the city without fighting, after setting fire to military warehouses near the railway station. The railway station was set afire as well as the trains and transport wagons. A civic committee was established by the citizens of the town which started administrating the city. Additionally, the Civil Guard was established to keep order in the city, while railway workers tried to put down the fire at the railway station.
Read more about this topic: Destruction Of Kalisz
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.