Half a dozen miles on the other side of the railroad was another and a larger village, equally dismal, but furnished with a church, a wayside shrine, small shops and other improvements. My special friend the Adjutant and I drove over there one day after supplies. We bought chocolate, nuts, sardines and biscuits to relieve the deadly monotony of our daily black bread, soup and kasha. The regiment bought some supplies at little market stalls near the station. Here one bought butter, sausages reeking with garlic, tinned fish and doubtful eggs. At an officers’ store in the vicinity Botchkareva spent some of the money donated in Petrograd for tea and sugar when they were needed, and for a kind of white bread or biscuits. They were hard and shaped like old-fashioned doughnuts, with a hole in the middle through which a string was run. A yard or two of this bread went well with good butter and hot, fragrant tea. As far as food was concerned I was better off in the camp than I was a little later in Petrograd. There was even a fairly good hot meal to be had at the station when we chose to go there, which we did several times. But no amount of good food would have kept our regiment happy in camp very long. The women fretted and chafed and demanded to know why they were kept in that hole. The Nachalnik coaxed and scolded them along, and Skridlova, who was easily the most popular person in camp, reminded them that it took six months to train ordinary soldiers and that they were being especially favored by having the time shortened.
Those women went into battle after less than two months’ training, as it turned out, for the evening of the ninth day the Nachalnik came back from headquarters with orders to march the next morning at five. What an uproar followed! Cheers, laughter, singing. You would have thought they were going anywhere except to a battlefield where death waited for some and cruel suffering for many. I wanted to go with them, and would have insisted on going had I known that they were so soon to fight. But orders were merely to advance for further drill under gunfire. I would have been frightfully in the way in the new position, which had no barracks, but only dog tents, just enough to go around. Nothing on earth except the knowledge that I would be depriving some one of those brave women from the comfort of a dry and sheltered bed persuaded me to leave them.
Five days later in Petrograd I read in the dispatches that they had been sent almost directly into action, leading men who had previously refused to advance, and turning a defeat into a victory; a small one to be sure, but Russia was thankful for even small victories those days. A short note from Skridlova prepared me for the story of losses which I knew was coming. She wrote in French, which she knows better than English, “You have heard already perhaps that we have been in action. I do not know yet how many were killed or have died of wounds, but two of those you knew well were killed. Catherine and Olga, who you remember had won three medals of St. George. Eighteen girls are wounded badly, Nina among them.” Nina was the girl who called her gun “sweetheart,” and who had been a prisoner in Germany. Skridlova was badly contused in the head, shoulders and knees, but she remained in command of the remnant of the battalion because the Nachalnik, Botchkareva, had suffered so severely from shell shock that she had to be sent to a hospital in Petrograd. She was nearly deaf when I saw her, and her heart was badly affected.
“It was a good fight,” she whispered, smiling from her pillow. “Not a woman faltered, not one. The Russian men hid in a little wood while the officers swore at them and begged them to advance. Then they sent us forward, and we called to the men that we would lead them if they would only follow. Some of them said they would follow, and we went forward on a run, still shouting to the men. About two-thirds of them went with us, and we easily put the Germans to flight. We killed a lot of Germans and took almost a hundred prisoners, including two officers.” In another hospital I found more than twenty of the battalion, some slightly and others seriously wounded. The worst cases were kept in base hospitals, near the battle front, and I never saw Nina again.
CHAPTER IX AMAZONS IN TRAINING
If the first battle of the first women soldiers in the world had been fought on American soil imagine what the newspapers would have made of the story. Especially if the women had gone into battle with the object of rallying a demoralized American army, and had succeeded in their object. And this is all the space Botchkareva’s victorious battalion was accorded in Novoe Vremya, one of the best newspapers in Russia. After describing briefly the engagement on the Smorgon-Krevo front, in which prisoners, guns and ammunition were taken, the account proceeded: “The women’s battalion made a counter attack, replacing deserters who ran away. This battalion captured almost a hundred prisoners including two officers. Botchkareva and Skridlova are wounded, the latter receiving contusions and shock from the explosion of a big shell. The battalion suffered some losses, but has won historic fame for the name of women. The best soldiers looked with consideration and esteem on their new fighting comrades, but the deserters were not touched by their example, and in this respect the aim was not reached. We must take care of these dear forces, and not give too much consideration to new formations of the kind.”
If the press of Russia had been wise, the fact that some of the slackers in the army were not touched by the women’s bravery would have been made less conspicuous than the more important fact that many soldiers were touched by it, and that the Russian army was thereby enabled to win a victory. Instead of discouraging new formations, the press should have called for more and more regiments of women to lead the men. They should have kept it up until people got so excited over the tragedy of women being torn to pieces by German shot and shrapnel that they would have risen in wrath, taken hold of their army and their government, and created conditions which would relieve women from the dreadful necessity of fighting.