If necessary, we will fight: Battle of Radviliškis with the Bermontites in 1919.
On November 21-22, 1919, fateful battles took place in the city of Radviliškis between the Lithuanian army and the Bermontinians - a joint force of Russian prisoners of war and German volunteers, which ended in a significant Lithuanian victory.
As Povilas Barštaitis, a museum curator at the Vytautas the Great War Museum, writes, at the end of the summer of 1919, as soon as the Bolsheviks were driven out of Zarasai, clouds of a new threat began to gather in the western part of Lithuania. The Bermontists, led by Pavel Bermont-Avalov, although they claimed to be fighting against the Bolsheviks, in reality sought to restore the Russian Empire, in which Lithuania would be just one of the provinces.
Having captured the Radviliškis railway station, the Bermontites cut off the vital communication link between the capital Kaunas and the Lithuanian army operating on the Bolshevik front. A garrison of 600-800 enemy troops entrenched themselves in the city's brick buildings, cemeteries, and a windmill.
A participant in the fighting, the chief Antanas Šukys, described the enemy as follows: "In the end, it doesn't matter to us who they are. We knew very well that they were the enemies of Lithuania, and that if necessary, we would have to fight them."
Although the Lithuanians failed on the first day of the attack, on the second day, having gathered a larger and more experienced force, they captured Radviliškis. The Bermontites fled, leaving behind a large amount of war booty. Only the intervention of Henri Albert Nisel, the head of the Entente Military Control Commission, stopped the further Lithuanian attack.
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Radviliškis windmill
The octagonal 4-story wooden mill stands near the outskirts of Radviliškis, in the village of Vaidulių.
The Radviliškis windmill was built in the 19th century. at the end of 1984-1985 - restored. It is said that in 1919 November 22 near the mill, the famous battle of the Lithuanian volunteer army took place with the Bermontinkai, a Russian military unit with a provocative orientation. After the Bermontians captured Radviliškis, an important railway junction, Lithuania's independence was in danger. The 2nd Algird regiment, led by lieutenant colonel V. Grigaliūnas-Glovacki, was entrusted with recapturing Radviliškis.
About 30 Lithuanian soldiers were killed in the battle, but the fighting ended with a Lithuanian victory. According to the volunteers who took part in the fighting, the whole company went out to attack the mill occupied by the Bermonters, the commander armed with a rifle always attacked first, and the others followed his example, so the mill was captured, and Radviliškis was also captured the next evening.
In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the battle against the Bermontians, in 1989 a chapel pillar was built near the mill and 70 oak trees were planted. The oak grove was added in 2019 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the battle.
Although there are versions that the battle itself could have taken place a little further away, at another mill, it was the Radviliškis mill that became the symbol of the battle. Historical reconstructions of the battle took place at the Radviliškis windmill more than once, in 2010 and 2014. the battle was recreated by military history club reenactors from Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Poland.
