Voldemars Ansovich Ozols
The very curious Lt. Col. Voldemars Ansovich Ozols was born to a working class family in Riga in 1884 and joined a Latvian youth movement in his youth before winning an appointment to the Vilnius yunkers academy and entering the Tsarist Army as a ensign with the 8th Moscow Grenadier Regiment ( Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin Friedrich’s own) in Tver in 1908. Completing the full course at the Nikolaev academy in St. Petersburg, by the time the Great War began he was a captain on the general staff in Tiflis where he helped stand up Armenian units once the war began. Sent to the distressed Galacian front in late 1915, he was decorated as a staff officer with the 4th Turkistan Rifle Brigade. Tapped to help raise and train Lettish (Latvian) units in early 1916, he became chief of staff of the 2nd Lettish Rifles brigade and earned a St. George by that December. Surviving the Revolution, by the end of Tsardom he was a light colonel and, suffering from gas attacks, was released from the Army in October 1917 for medical treatment. By December 1918, he had resurfaced in now-break away Latvia and would serve with assorted Baltic armies against the Reds through the summer of 1921 Fleeing the Baltics in the mid-1930s due to political issues, he lived in Paris briefly then soon found himself fighting with the International Brigades in Spain against Franco– one of the few former Tsarist officers to do so, as many others had cast their lot with Franco. Codenamed Zolya, he was a GRU-affiliated “Red Orchestra” asset in occupied France working against the Germans. Post war, he popped back up in then-Soviet Riga and passed there in 1949, after teaching at Latvian State University and the Riga Pedagogical Institute while holding a Major General’s rank in the GRU. Having been on many people’s “list” for decades and escaping at least two different death warrants he served under no less than five flags and died an old man, at peace. He was buried with full military honors at Rainis Cemetery (section GXV), in Riga.