Władysław Raginis (June 27, 1908 – September 10, 1939) was a Polish military commander during the Polish Defensive War of 1939 of a small force holding the Polish fortified defense positions against a vastly larger invasion during the Battle of Wizna. Because the positions were held at great cost for three days before being annihilated with few survivors, Wizna is referred to as the Polish Thermopylae and Captain Raginis as a modern Leonidas. Background Raginis was born in Zariņi (Zariny) village near to Dźwińsk (Daugavpils), Courland Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Latvia) to a landowning family with patriotic traditions. Soon after graduating from a gymnasium in 1927, he joined the Infantry NCO School in Komorowo near Ostrów Mazowiecka where he was a mediocre student and completed his studies in 1928. He then completed a short practice of the military and the same year he enrolled at the Infantry Officers School in Ostrów Mazowiecka. One of his schoolmates recalled: "He had a borderland accent, and was quiet and shy. Slim, small, blond hair .... " After graduating on July 15, 1930, he was assigned to the 76th Infantry Regiment stationed in Grodno, where he was a platoon commander and instructor-lecturer at the School Cadet Corps. In 1939, as a distinction, he was advanced to lieutenant and then to captain and assigned to the elite Border Defence Corps (KOP) as the commander of the 3rd company, heavy machine gun battalion, of the Border Defence Corps Regiment "Sarny" under the command of Lt-Colonel Nikodem Sulik. In the late summer of 1939, the "Sarny" Regiment sent the bulk of its forces to Upper Silesia to man the Fortified Area Silesia, some units, including Raginis, instead went to Osowiec Fortress, near the border with East Prussia. In anticipation of the outbreak of the Second World War, on September 2, 1939, Major Jakub Fober gave Raginis command of all the Wizna Fortified Area, a buffer of between the Narew River and Biebrza River, which was part of defensive line of Independent Operational Group "Narew" on the right wing of Polish forces. "Wizna" secured a major artery of communication, the Łomża – Białystok road and the Zambrów – Osowiec railway. It is worth noting that some of the shelters were incomplete as war broke out, some had little to no ventilation, many of them not camouflaged and some were not fitted with armored observation domes. The incomplete state