Galitzine, Dimitri, Captain Prince, born 16-11-1917, in Kislovodsk, Russia, to Countess Marie, the son of Prince Boris Galitzine (1892 – 1919),
a captain in the Imperial Russian Army’s Hussar Guards and of Countess Marie, daughter of Duke Georg Alexander of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, (1893 – 1979),
of Golder’s Green, Middlesex. His father was a captain in the Imperial Russian Army’s Hussar Guards. About two years after the birth of the Prince, his father was killed by the Bolsheviks. The young Prince found himself fleeing to England on a ship of the Royal Navy,
together with his mother and baby sister.
By the age of two Prince Dimitri had lost his father in a fatal battle against the Bolsheviks, and his mother was forced to flee her homeland aboard a Royal Navy ship together with Dimitri and his baby sister. They settled eventually in England.
Death and burial ground of Captain Prince. Galitzine, Dimitri.
Galitzine enlisted in the British Army in 1939 and was commissioned as an officer, undertaking several training courses in guerrilla and irregular warfare. In July 1944 he was posted to the 2nd Battalion Monmouthshire Battalion in north-west Europe. In October 1944 the battalion took part in the successful liberation of the town of ’s Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, but it cost Galitzine his life – he was fatally wounded in the stomach, and died the following day, 26-10-1944, age 26.
Captain Prince Dimitri Galitzine died during the liberation of the Netherlands serving with the Monmouthshire Regiment. His parents were originally from Russia and so the bible verse chosen for his inscription is engraved in Cyrillic lettering.
Not much is known about the Prince’s life in England, but we know that he enlisted in the British Army in 1939. The Monmouthshire Regiment, in which he was serving, would be involved in the liberation of a Dutch town called Hertogenbosch. It was during this battle that Galitzine lost his life, after sustaining fatal wounds as the liberation was taking place. He is now buried in Uden War Cemetery in the Netherlands. On his grave are inscribed in Russian the words ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God’. Uden War CemeteryUden, Uden Municipality, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands Section 3. D. 1.
If there is one thing we can learn from the Prince’s story, it is that the title at the front of a person’s name didn’t denote a protective shield from the effects of the two brutal World Wars of the 20th century. The way in which militaries mobilised underwent a seismic shift at the outbreak of the Great War and this translated through to the Second World War. Commoners no longer viewed service to one’s nation as a degraded job reserved for the peasantry. The fight for freedom meant that huge European Powers, including Britain herself, would have to look further and beyond than they had ever done before.
Captain Galitzine, the Russian Prince, is commemorated by the Commission in Uden War Cemetery in the Netherlands. But how did a Russian Royal come to buried at the age of twenty-six far from his own land?
We can trace back this remarkable man’s roots to a noble family in fifteenth century Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The earliest recorded traces of this family line come from the Lithuanian Prince George who would later emigrate to the court of Vasily of Moscow. Prince George’s children and grandchildren were considered boyars in Russian society; a term encompassing the highest ranks of feudal aristocracies. Throughout the centuries, the House of Galitzine would come to be at the forefront of Russian politics, the military, arts and sciences.
One of the Prince’s ancestors was Serene Prince Dmitry Vladimirovich Golitsyn , whose valiant efforts during the Napoleonic Wars led to his promotion to Lieutenant General. He later became the War Governor of Moscow for over twenty years.
Other notable members of the house include the last Tsarist Prime Minister of Russia, a Governor of St. Petersburg, a Governor of Finland, a fellow of the Royal Society, and the inventor of the first electromagnetic seismograph, who all would leave a huge imprint on Russian society and beyond.


Leave a Reply