The Austrian Red Cross workers found her.
"Why, this is a woman!" exclaimed the Austrian surgeon who examined her. The Austrians nursed her. When the Russians again took Opatow she was still in a hospital. She was recaptured by them and sent back to Kier, where she was given her honors.
Austrian women are also fighting. Stefa Falica is a young Croatian who enlisted with her husband in the same regiment. In this case her sex was well-known, and she was not forced to use men's clothes. She has already been made a corporal for her bravery in the field.
A similar case is that of Stanislawa Ordinska, who enlisted, masquerading as a man, in the Polish Legion of Austria. She was made a sergeant for bravery shown at the front before it was discovered she was a woman. Then she was allowed to keep her rank and her gun.
One of the most interesting bodies of women soldiers is the Serbian organization called the "Legia Smirti," or Legion of Death.
The Legion of Death is composed of women who have been trained in the use of firearms and in the science of war. In the Balkan States, where women frequently follow their husbands throughout military campaigns, acting as pack-carriers, camp-attendants, and even as trench-diggers and sappers when necessary, it is not unusual for them to take their places beside their husbands or their lovers on the firing line. There are many expert rifle shots among them, many indeed who are capable of taking men's places under necessity. Accustomed to attack in solitary places, and more or less inured to bereavement, a kind of grim quiet follows them wherever they are seen.
The Legion of Death is recruited from all classes of women, from the wives of rich merchants to the wives and daughters of peasants. This Amazon corps had its origin in the patriotic enthusiasm of a woman sixty-two years old, whose husband died for Serbia in the war for liberty against the Turks. The women handle the regulation rifles and are held in deadly fear by the Austrians and Germans.
Indeed, it seems that on both sides the soldiers dread the women soldiers more than they do those of their own sex.
Kipling's "The female of the species is more deadly than the male," recalls itself, of course. Dr. Hans Hulduckson, writing of this same phenomenon, said:
"Women are not natural combatants. They do not rush into war for war's sake. They are without the blood lust that makes fighting a joy for fighting's sake. They will fight only in desperate straits, and then only for their honor, their children or the existence of their country. Standing at one of these last ditches, however, they fight with the ferocity of tigers. They do battle without rule or reason and to the death. An Englishwoman, who is endeavoring to organize a company of women for military training, said that she did not fear that they would not fight, but the fear was that they might fight too fiercely. They are the most cruel of combatants when they so far overcome their native womanly gentleness as to enter into combat.