Page 128 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

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making them both critically important and somewhat isolated from other civilizing elements. This
balancing of foreignness and familiarity was reflected in the organization’s yearbooks, where articles

frequently highlighted the exploits of particular KOP brigades. The 1924-5 yearbook featured a

report on KOP soldiers who made the 35-kilometer journey from the town of Równe to the

settlement of Hoszcza where the battalion was based. As they made their way eastward toward their

destination, they left the signifiers of civilization far behind them: paved roads gave way to fields and

forests, as a cold autumn wind blew in their faces and the ubiquitous mud of northern Volhynia came

up to their knees. On reaching Hoszcza, the soldiers found that the border police were ill-equipped to

deal with eastern conditions, although they soon rectified the situation by seeking out bandits in the

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swamps before warming and drying themselves by the fire in their cozy quarters. In 1925, KOP
authorities also organized a run along the length of the Polish-Soviet border, with soldiers passing

along certain segments before handing over the baton to one of their peers. According to a report in

the yearbook, the run proved the connections between various border outposts, certified military

preparedness, demonstrated the stamina of particular soldiers, and allowed border guards to study the

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roads and trails that ran through the borderlands.

Images, as well as words, conveyed KOP’s evolving role in an environment that largely

remained hostile. While the early front covers of KOP’s yearbooks (from 1924-5 and 1925-6)

depicted soldiers at ease in their surroundings, later images emphasized the more hostile physical

conditions that soldiers were forced to confront, suggesting that their task was getting harder, rather

than easier. On the yearbook’s 1926-7 cover (Figure 3.3a), two soldiers, enveloped in tree branches,

peered out to the left, one with his bayonet pointed and ready for the enemy. In 1927-8 (Figure 3.3b),

91 Halina Lach, “Działalność kulturalno-oświatowa KOP na kresach wschodnich,” in Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza:
Materiały z Konferencji Naukowej, edited by Jerzy Prochwicz (Kętrzyn, 2005), 114; Jan Dec, Dobrzy sąsiedzi:
książeczka wydana z okazji 10-lecia służby K.O.P. na wschodnich granicach Polski (Warsaw, 1934), 21.
92 “Przed Rokiem (Z pamiętnika Kopisty),” in Czekaj-Wiśniewska et al. (eds.), Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza, 53-54.
93 Kazimierz Kobos kpt., “Pierwszy bieg rozstawny K.O.P.,” in Czekaj-Wiśniewska et al. (eds.), Korpus Ochrony
Pogranicza, 33-35.

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