Despite their heroic role in liberating Confracourt and subsequently other nearby French towns, the soldiers in BUK 102 were not safe. Ironically, the biggest danger they faced was not from the Germans, but from Americans — specifically, the American military command. 

In mid-September, after advancing with his OSS team toward the French-German border as part of the U.S. Army’s 117^th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, grandfather was urgently summoned to the headquarters of the U.S. 7^th Army in Vesoul. He was told the subject was the Ukrainian battalion. 

Grandfather expected to deliver a report detailing the battalion’s heroic actions in repelling German assaults, saving French citizens from execution and freeing villages from German occupation. 

Instead, he got an earful from his commanding officers. 

“You are here to answer to charges of leaving an enemy force astride 7^th Army’s lines of communication,” barked a general who was seated among a half-dozen or so grim-faced brigadier generals and colonels. 

Could he be joking, Grandfather wondered?

The general was dead serious.  

Evidently, a couple of close calls in the preceding weeks between advancing Allied forces and BUK 102 had filtered up to the group of U.S. generals and colonels. Even though grandfather had sent intelligence dispatches about the defection of BUK 102 to the Allied side, and Doillon had changed the uniforms of the soldiers to make them look less German, there was still confusion when Allied soldiers encountered the rag-tag BUK 102 on the move. On September 17, a cool-headed U.S. military policeman (MP) had averted a disaster near Port-sur-Saone. Seeing what looked like an enemy battalion cross a bridge, French elements of the 6^th Corps of the U.S. 7^th Army were ready to open fire on BUK 102. The MP interceded and ordered an escort by a group of U.S. MPs for BUK 102. 

So the Ukrainians in BUK 102 were on the minds of U.S. top brass. 

But there was something else. 

Over the next two and a half hours, grandfather learned that the U.S. had made an agreement with the Soviet Union, an ally in the war against Nazi Germany, that required former Soviet soldiers captured by American forces after having defected to the Wehrmacht to be turned over to Soviet military authorities. 

Walter Kuzmuk, third from the right, sits with French and

Ukrainians soldiers. Andre Bazeau is to his immediate right.

Photo courtesy of Peter Gallant.

With the fresh memories of the 20 BUK members who had been killed fighting the Germans and another 43 who had been wounded, grandfather jumped to his feet. “That would be criminal,” he said. “You must realize what these men have done. His voice quivering with indignation, grandfather recited the story of the mutiny, BUK 102’s service in the maquis and the roles of Doillon and Vougnon in leading the Ukrainians. “And, gentlemen,” he closed, “were I again to find myself in a like situation my action would be exactly the same.”

A voice piped up from among the commanding officers. “Do you think the Ukrainians would serve in the French Foreign Legion if given the opportunity?”

“I think they would jump at the chance,” grandfather replied. That exchange paved the way for members of BUK 102 not to be sent back to the Soviet Union where they would likely face trial as traitors for their service in the Wehrmacht and punishment of exile to labor camps or execution.

***

BUK 102’s odyssey within the Allied forces began shortly thereafter. In line with grandfather’s exchange with the generals that day in Vesoul, the U.S. 7^th Army took BUK 102 under its protection, first disarming the battalion and then on September 17 transferring its personnel to an empty castle 15 miles south of Confracourt.  (That was when the near fateful encounter happened on the bridge near Port-sur-Saone.)

As part of an arrangement with the French, BUK 102’s service with Forces Francaises de l’interieur, which commanded the maquis, officially ended in late September. The plan called for units in BUK 102 to be broken up and for its soldiers to enter the French Foreign Legion (FFL) as privates, even the officer corps, and be spread among its elements. The battalion assented after a long discussion throught the night with Lt. Kuzmuk, their U.S. Army liaison, who reminded the members of BUK 102 that they had no other favorable option. For the officers, demotion to private was the price they had to pay for freedom. In his after-action report, Kuzmuk wrote of the BUK 102 officer corps’ acceptance of the terms: “They had come so far, they may as well go a little further.”

Surprisingly, there was little bitterness at the reduced status forced on BUK 102’s soldiers.  On September 26, about 50 soldiers left the battalion to join the FFL, the first contingent to do so. To celebrate their turn-of-fate, the departing soldiers sang as they exited the castle grounds in formation. Around the same time, about 20-30 Polish soldiers in BUK 102 voluntarily left the battalion to return to the Soviet Army, and a couple of Poles left to fight with the Polish. A handful of older soldiers remained with the maquis. 

While awaiting induction into the FFL, the remaining soldiers took a month’s rest provided free of charge by the French High Command at the castle of the abbey of Neuvelle-lès-la-Charité. For once, there were no weapons to carry, ambushes to conduct or artillery to dodge. 

The month in the castle gave a respite, but members of the French maquis recalled some unusual behavior from Ukrainian officers. Perhaps concerned the troops might lose their fighting edge, Captain Zintchouk, one of Major Hloba’s officers, did his inspection of Ukrainians soldiers in the castle on horseback, ascending and descending the castle stairs in the saddle. Discipline was enforced harshly: when a soldier committed an infraction, he was whacked by a cudgel.  

Members of BUK 102 pose for a photo with Walter Kuzmuk while at the castle of the Abbey of Neuvelle-lès-la-Charité, likely in October 1944. Photo courtesy of Peter Gallant.

Good news came when the FFL decided to keep BUK 102 officers with their units. Apparently, the first group of 50 soldiers taken by the FFL had performed so well fighting the Germans at Belfort that the FFL reversed the initial order. After that, over the course of the month of October, BUK 102 units left intact to be absorbed into French fighting forces. 

But the Soviets were not done. Soviet delegations crisscrossing France were demanding that the Allies uphold the agreement to return former Red Army soldiers to the U.S.S.R. Their demands were likely supported by French communists in the leadership of the French resistance, who wanted to please the brotherly communist Soviet Government by putting pressure on the remaining soldiers in the castle to return home. 

So, in late October towards the end of BUK 102’s stay at the abbey, a Soviet diplomatic delegation from Paris visited the castle and inquired why the soldiers had not returned to USSR. Fully aware of the alarm among his troops about forcible repatriation, Major Hloba replied that nobody in BUK 102 wanted to return to the Soviet Union. Instead, they wanted to continue to fight alongside the French. Kuzmuk, who stayed with BUK 102 during the month at the castle, estimated that 95% of the soldiers — not wanting to return to the Soviet Union — joined the FFL. 

But the Soviets had good cards to play with the French. The Soviet military mission in France proposed to exchange French citizens from the Alsace-Lorraine region — whom the Red Army had detained during its westward sweep through Germany — for its own nationals like the BUK 102 soldiers. It was a form of horse-trading, with French nationals who had worked as forced labor for the Germans gaining freedom from Soviet internment camps while Soviet citizens like the Ukrainians faced the prospect of losing the freedom they had enjoyed outside their country. The French didn’t bite. 

But after two months, under pressure from the Soviet Ambassador in Paris, the stand-alone units in the FFL were disbanded. BUK 102 ceased to exist, and its soldiers, without a clear military designation in the French military, were distributed among different units of the 13^th demi-brigade of the FFL. 

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