The response was instantaneous. So many women offered to enlist that she had difficulty in accepting all of them, and she resolutely weeded out those that seemed unfit, enacting a strict and severe discipline, more rigorous, in fact, than any that had been undergone by the male soldiers. With rifles supplied by the Government, and with men acting as drill sergeants, she trained her girls until they were well versed in the elements of soldiering, and after they had become proficient in the use of the rifle she prepared to entrain for the front, this time an officer with a thousand or more soldiers under her command.
But her system of training and the severe penalties she exacted from her soldiers brought her into opposition to the Russian Government, which, fatuously believing that rule by the people could be carried into war, insisted on her forming committees in her command and allowing her soldiers a share in the administration of the battalion. This she refused to do, declaring that she would resign her commission first and disband her battalion. If men were difficult to control at the front under the committee system, how much more would this be the case with girls, unused to discipline and more prone by nature than the men to give way to the difficulties and the temptations of war!
After several stormy interviews with the army chiefs and with Kerensky himself, Yashka was allowed to have her own way, and in direct command of her own battalion she set out for the front line. Already the Battalion of Death had had a beneficial effect upon the soldiers at the front, and she believed that when once her women went into action the men would follow without question.
When the Battalion of Death was actually in the front line Yashka saw very quickly, however, that things were far worse than she had imagined, for in the time that she had been recruiting and training her new force, the army had undergone complete demoralization. There was now open friendship between the Russians and the Germans in many quarters of the front, and fighting was unheard of, the soldiers' committees refusing to give their consent to any proposal of that sort. It was in the midst of such a situation that Yashka and her women reached the line.
The Bolsheviki, as the revolutionists were called, had gained almost complete control over the soldiers, and under their influence the army had become a savage mob. Only a few loyal men remained. Soon after Yashka's arrival the officers attempted to put her plan into operation and launch an attack against the Germans, but the soldiers refused to obey and the battalion of women moved out almost unsupported against the enemy, who promptly opened a heavy fire. Their example was tardily followed by the men and a general attack was delivered on a wide portion of the line. After a severe fight, the women soldiers captured the German trenches that lay in front of them, but only to be confronted with a new and terrible difficulty,—for the supports that they had relied upon refused to march any further, declaring that they would defend what they had already gained from the enemy but that under no circumstance would they attack again. This made it necessary for the Battalion of Death to make a headlong retreat, for while they waited for support they had nearly been surrounded by the Germans.
Then the army, incited by the Bolshevist agitators, became completely unmanageable. When Yashka herself opened fire on some Germans who were walking openly through No Man's Land, the Russians on her flanks turned their machine guns against the women and prepared to mow them down. The usefulness of the Battalion was at an end and the lives of the girls were in danger from the Russian soldiers. It became necessary to take them to the rear. Even there, however, when quartered in reserve barracks, they were not safe from interference. With vile threats and taunts deserters and Bolshevists crowded about their quarters and were finally driven away by a volley fired by the girls from the windows of their barracks.
Knowing that this action would result in an attack by the Russians, Yashka hastily assembled her Battalion and marched them away with all their equipment, taking concealment in a nearby wood from which the girls were hurried to the rear and discharged in a score of stations, making their way to their homes as best they might. Revolution now had the upper hand, the army was completely destroyed by the revolutionary doctrine and there was no longer any use in continuing the Battalion, which had become a center for the attacks of friends and foes alike.
Yashka herself returned to Petrograd where she was arrested by the Bolsheviki, but, after a searching examination, she was allowed to proceed to her home. She determined, however, to use all her remaining energy in helping the few loyal Russians who were grouped under a general named Kornilov and were now at open war with the Bolsheviki, so, after procuring a disguise, she made her way through the Bolshevik lines to the loyal forces. Kornilov desired her to return with word from him for the loyalists who were hiding in many places in Russia, but in trying to cross the lines again Yashka found herself entrapped by her enemies. Throwing off her disguise she boldly disclosed herself to them, saying she was on her way to undergo treatment at a hospital for a severe wound she had received while in the Russian army.
And then this courageous girl underwent dangers far more deadly than any she had suffered at the front. She was tried by the Bolsheviki and sentenced to be shot, although she had destroyed all the evidence of her relations with Kornilov, and her foes knew nothing more about her than that she had been commander of the woman's battalion. This alone, however, was crime enough in their eyes to warrant her instant execution, and with part of her clothing taken from her she stood in line with twenty Russian officers to receive her death blow. It happened, however, that on the Bolshevik committee that was present to witness the execution was one of the men who had served beside her in the trenches, and he recognized his old comrade.
"Are you Yashka?" he asked. When she replied in the affirmative he pulled her from the line and took her place in the squad of the condemned, saying that they would have to shoot him before they could shoot Yashka whom he knew and loved. After a stormy argument a reprieve was shown to the executioners and Yashka was allowed to be taken from the field of death and returned to prison.