The women said it was reported that of the 200 of the command who reached the front only fifty remained. Twenty were killed, eight were taken prisoners and all the rest were wounded.
"Several times," said one wounded girl, "we attacked the Germans. Especially memorable was our attack at Novospassky wood, near Smorgon, where the enemy, hearing the voices of girls, lost their nerve. The result was that the prisoners were a few women, from whom we learned for the first time that German women also were fighting.
"We did not feel the slightest fear for our personal safety. Our passion was to serve the fatherland. We advanced gaily against the foe with laughter and song, our only unpleasant sentiments being when we first came to the corpses. Once when replying to the enemy's severe rifle and machine gun fire, we discovered to our amazement that all our men comrades in the neighboring trenches had treacherously fled, leaving us—a handful of women—to face the enemy alone."
The Russian women's battalion underwent the greatest hardships, not only in the actual fighting, but on their way to the front, according to stories told by wounded girls who have been brought back from the fighting lines to be placed in hospitals. Their heroism under fire was wonderful. Their dash and elan and their fearlessness under fire make a new chapter of the war.
The girls were sent to the front after they had demanded of Premier Kerensky that they be allowed to go.
They had boarded a train of long striped cars. The wooden bunks had been placed along the walls. The journey had been long and tiresome. Word of the women soldiers' coming had preceded them and they were greeted by jeering and hooting crowds at every station along the route.
The girls had their answers ready to the cries of the station crowds.
"What do you think you're going to do?" the jeers would go.
"Why are you fighting?"