Polish legionnaires (World War I)

Marian Józef Żegota-Januszajtis (3 April 1889, Częstochowa, Piotrków Governorate - 24 March 1973, Royal Tunbridge Wells) was a Polish military commander and politician. One of the founders of Polish paramilitary pro-independence organizations in Austrian partition, and last commander of the 1st Brigade of Polish Legions.
He was also the organizer of unsuccessful coup in 1919, general in the Second Polish Republic and Polish Armed Forces in the West, voivode of the Nowogródek Voivodeship (1924-1926), and member of the Polish government in Exile.
Following the Soviet invasion of Poland he founded the Organization for the Struggle for Freedom in Lwów. He was arrested by NKVD on 27 October 1939 and imprisoned in Lwów and then in Moscow Lubyanka prison. After the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement of July 1941, he was released. After the war, he remained in exile in the United Kingdom, where he died in March 1973 and was buried in Crawley cemetery next to his wife. In November 1981, his ashes were brought to Poland – resting in the New Cemetery in Zakopane, in legionnaires' quarters.

Brigadier General Mieczysław Makary Smorawiński (1893–1940), was a Polish military commander and officer of the Polish Army. He was one of the Polish generals identified by forensic scientists of the Katyn Commission as the victim of the Soviet Katyn massacre of 1940.
Mieczysław Makary Smorawiński was born December 25, 1893, in Kalisz, then in Russian Empire. There he graduated from a local primary school and then a Russian language trade school. Early in his youth he joined the Zarzewie resistance organization and became one of its leaders in Kalisz. Denunciated, in 1911 he was arrested and sentenced to 6 months in prison in Ekaterinoslav (modern Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine). After finishing his term he emigrated to Lwów (modern Lviv) in Austro-Hungarian Galicia, where in 1912 he passed his matura exam and joined the Faculty of Chemistry of the Lwów School of Technology. There he also joined the Drużyny Strzeleckie organization, in which he received basic military training.

Stefan Dąb-Biernacki (7 January 1890 – 9 February 1959) was a general of the army during the Second Polish Republic. He served as a major general in the Polish Army in overall command of strategic reserve Army "Prusy" during the 1939 German Invasion of Poland.

Wacław Kajetan Sieroszewski (24 August 1858 – 20 April 1945) was a Polish writer, Polish Socialist Party activist, and soldier in the World War I-era Polish Legions (decorated with the Virtuti Militari). For activities subversive of the Russian Empire, he had spent many years in Siberian exile.
Sieroszewski's Siberian experiences became the subjects of his many stories and novels—Na kresach lasów (At the Edge of the Woods, 1894), Dno nędzy (The Depths of Misery, 1900), Risztau (1899), Ucieczka (The Escape, 1904), Zamorski diabeł (The Overseas Devil, 1900). He also authored the popular Bajki (Fables, 1910). His 12 lat w kraju Jakutów (12 years in the Yakut country, 1900) provides the first extensive ethnographic account of the Yakut people.
Sieroszewski visited Korea (then the Korean Empire) in 1903. He arrived via boat to Busan, then traveled through the peninsula with an interpreter, speaking with locals on the way to the capital Seoul. He published a book on his experiences in the peninsula in 1905. The trip appeared to make an impression on him, and he would frequently mention Korea in later interviews. He once likened Korea's political situation, in which multiple foreign powers were encroaching on it, to Poland's.Whilst in Paris in 1910, he heard that Jan Wacław Machajski had been asking his friend Stefan Żeromski to provide a reference so that Machajski's wife would be employed by Kazimierz Dłuski. Having heard rumours circulated by the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia that Machajski was a terrorist, Sieroszewski wrote to Dłuski warning against getting involved with the Machajskis. When this letter fell into the hands of the police, they promptly arrested Machajski.