Uhlan

**Key Features** | »PPhS-40 machine pistol»War horse (Shire breed)»Horseshoes»Home Army banner»Locket (containing picture of girlfriend)

## Tactical Analysis

* **I got the horses in the back:** The Home Army's love letter to the times where tanks were not a thing yet, their Uhlan corps consist of *actual* cavalry riders with their mounts providing suppression fire with their machine pistols.

* **Fast spurs are attached:** In desperate times (i.e. when ambushes go wrong), Uhlans can saddle up their mounts and order them to run like hell from potential attackers; though the mount would need to regain its stamina afterwards.

* **Grave's a matte black:** Their machine pistols have been proven to not cause as much as small dents in tanks, meaning they have to focus more at infantry.

* **Got a sword that's black to match:** Experienced Uhlan riders are often supplied armor for their mounts, turning them to veritable war-horses. The armor has been observed to be more resistant against small arms fire, though. Also, they are also applied cavalry sabres that makes them dangerous to any enemy close by.

## Background

"*Somewhere from beneath that black water*

*A young uhlan mounts his horse*

*He tenderly bids farewell to his girl*

*Even more tenderly to the Ukraine"*

- "Hej sokoły!", traditional Polish folk song
In communist-aligned schools and newspapers inside the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations, the Poles in World War II were commonly depicted as lance-wielding buffoons riding horses and staring down the barrel of an Anvil Heavy Tank. The Polish resistance, the political cartoons say, is a nation of idiotic reactionaries holding on to outmoded ideals (and martial methods) and going on glorified suicide missions instead of having the sense to live and fight another day.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

During the Second World War, the Polish cavalry was one of the largest in the world. As the Soviets pushed westward, the Poles greeted them the same way they welcomed the Ottomans a few centuries ago: their famed uhlans but this time modernized. Galloping to the village of Krojanty, the cavalrymen charged at the hordes of conscripts, who at first couldn't fire back due to the sudden offense. They dispersed the invaders until the Soviets returned with armored anti-infantry vehicles, which machine guns forced the cavalry to retreat. While charging toward tanks head-on was borderline suicide, the uhlans used the Red Army's lack of mobility against them, flanking their vulnerable positions and retreating back into the forests and hills. The Polish countryside soon became a battlefield where horse-drawn artillery and dragoons held the line against the Soviet war machine pouring down the eastern border. Even on darkening days in Soviet-occupied Warsaw, the uhlans fought back with much ferocity and courage, shocking even the most steeled Soviet commanders.

As the uprising wound down and hopes for Allied reinforcements faded, many cavalrymen in the Home Army continued their fight. Having to defend their steeds from their starving neighbors, they kept them for more than military usage. Bereft of cars and tanks (having either meant you were a Wojtek, a collaborator or a Soviet tank driver), the resistance cells used steeds to deliver supplies and information to faraway bases, scouting for enemy military formations, and tilling the soil for crops to feed fellow rebels. Many in the former Uhlan regiments, primarily older WWII survivors found themselves unable to fight as well as their younger selves. Willing to continue the fight in another way, they began to teach horseback riding and marksmanship to their children and younger sympathizers.

The new generation **uhlan** is young, restless, and eager to pick up the reins in the fight for freedom. With their only options being breaking their backs inside a Soviet factory or revolution, these unruly youths vent their anger by shooting at conscripts with their PPhS-40 machine pistols looted from Soviet caches. This has led to considerable casualties in the uhlan bands' ranks, as glory-hounds dare to emulate their Home Army predecessors only to meet Sickles leaping over them. Indeed, samizdat writers and artists began calling to the Allies, the Continentals, and even the Union of Anti-Communists about how the Soviets are killing their young, but apart from more horses and guns, major assistance has yet to come. The Soviets launched a counter-propaganda campaign, which had a stronger appeal beckoning parents in the Warsaw Pact not to endanger their children by letting them join rebel groups. Nowadays, older fighters have to restrain them from provoking Soviet bases by vandalizing them with graffiti saying 'TYRAN' (although they smile at the younger generation's defiant acts), and instead direct them into poorly-defended formations to properly honor their past brothers-in-arms' cause.