Chapter 31

MARIA BOTCHKAREVA

Not since the time of Molly Pitcher has there been a woman soldier so famous in her own country as a Russian girl named Maria Botchkareva, who fought beside the men in the Russian army in the World War and afterward became the commander of a battalion of women soldiers, who called themselves the "Battalion of Death." It is only because the World War was so huge that the name of this girl is not known everywhere. Not only did she make as good a soldier as a man, but she was decorated for bravery. She carried to safety out of No Man's Land on her own back nearly a hundred wounded Russians, while the shells burst and the bullets flew around her, and in the course of the war she was wounded four times.

Maria Botchkareva, who is still living, was born in 1889, the daughter of a Russian fisherman, who was originally a serf. He was too poor to buy a wagon to market his fish, and was compelled to sell them at less than the market price to traveling pedlers. Her mother did manual labor for twelve hours a day to earn five cents. Starvation was constantly at the door, and the father was of a surly and cruel disposition, and frequently beat his wife and his little children.

When quite a young girl Maria became a servant in the family of a Russian army officer, and when still young she married a soldier named Afanasi Botchkarev, who gave her her present name. He beat her so often and treated her so brutally when he was drunk that she tried to drown herself, but was saved because some workmen had seen her plight. Shortly afterward she ran away from Botchkarev and worked her way to the town of Irkutsk in Siberia.

There she underwent many adventures. Her great strength enabled her to work as a man in a gang of laborers who were paving the courtyard of Irkutsk prison with asphalt, and she continued this work for a year, until she became ill and forced to go to a hospital.

War broke out between Russian and Germany. It was the beginning of the great war that was to shake the entire world, and echoes and rumors of terrible events were not long in reaching even so remote a town as Irkutsk. Soldiers commenced to go away to the front and stories of defeats and victories were in the air. And although Maria, unlike Jeanne d'Arc, never heard the voices of the Saints, still a voice within her called on her to go to war to save her country.

But how was a woman to go to war? If it had been difficult in the remote past when Jeanne d'Arc was alive, how much more was success beyond her grasp in a country controlled by modern law and the regulations of a well organized national army. But Maria dressed herself in man's clothes and made her way back to her home, beating her way with difficulty on trains that were crowded with soldiers, and taking over two months to accomplish the difficult journey from Siberia.

When she arrived at her native village she found that her worthless husband had been drafted into the army, taken to the front and was listed as "missing." Nobody knew if he were alive or dead.

Her father and mother were glad to see Maria, but exclaimed in horror and surprise when she told them that she intended to be a soldier.

"You are crazy," they shouted at her. "Women do not go to war! Stay at home with us, for we are old and need your help." But in spite of their entreaties she was obdurate, and going to a clerk in the 25th Reserve Battalion which was quartered there, she declared to him her purpose of enlisting and of fighting in the trenches.

Laughter greeted her on every side. A grinning adjutant took her to the Colonel, who received her kindly, his astonishment only equalled by his admiration for her patriotism.

"But women do not go to war, my dear," he ejaculated when Maria told him her decision.

"Nevertheless I intend to go and I desire you to enlist me," the brave girl answered.

The Colonel could not disobey regulations and enlist a woman in the army, but a telegram was sent to the Czar himself, and in a short time an answer was received from the Czar's official headquarters, announcing that Maria Botchkareva was entitled to become a soldier in the Russian army.

So Maria put on her uniform and was nicknamed "Yashka," a name that soon was known throughout her regiment. Dressed in a man's clothes and bearing arms like a man, she went through the regular drill and fatigue and in a very short time became proficient in handling a rifle which increased the respect in which her comrades held her. They had ridiculed her at first, and made life a burden to her with insults and practical jokes, but she bore these things stolidly and at last won their respect and affection.

The regiment entrained for the front and Yashka went with it. A Russian general heard of the presence of a girl soldier in its ranks and angrily ordered that she be taken from the line and sent to the rear--but Yashka was clever enough to point out that her enlistment had been received by the Czar himself and so superseded the order of the General, who wished to send her home from whence she had come.

The regiment went into the trenches, and Maria, for the first time, heard the roar of the cannon and the whistling of the shells. Her comrades had jokingly told her that she would run when the first shot was fired, but she minded the bombardment no more than any one else. The Germans threw over large quantities of their favorite weapon, gas, and the trenches and the hollows in the ground were filled with the noxious vapors that it was death to breathe, but the Russians put on their gas masks and still went forward.

Then, after serving in the line for some time, the girl soldier had her first experience in more active warfare, for her company was ordered over the top to capture the German sector opposite them, and with fixed bayonets the men moved forward under a heavy fire from the batteries of their own artillery. It was a severe attack, bravely delivered, but doomed to failure because the barbed wire entanglements of the enemy had not been destroyed by the Russian shells. Men dropped by the score, and when the company was finally compelled to retreat there were only seventy left out of two hundred and fifty that had begun the advance. Maria was one of the survivors, her woman's heart torn with pity at the cries of the wounded who had been left dying in No Man's Land. Crawling back from the shelter of the Russian trenches, she dragged a wounded soldier to safety and returned for another. All night she toiled bringing them in until more than fifty owed their lives to her. For this she was recommended for a decoration for bravery, but never received it. Later, however, she won her badge of courage for more work of the same sort performed under heavy fire and in the face of the greatest obstacles.

Then her own turn came. She was wounded and sent to the rear as a casualty. When her wound was healed she returned to the front, only to sustain further wounds and win another decoration. On one occasion she was captured by the Germans, but an attack freed her from their hands after she had been a prisoner for a little over eight hours.

In all the fighting that she had experienced this girl personally did her share, handling a rifle with skill and on several occasions using the bayonet with as much strength as a man. Her fame by this time had penetrated beyond her own regiment. The name of Yashka was known throughout the Russian army, and numbers of curious soldiers crowded around her when she happened to go to some part of the field where she had not previously been seen.

Then began the terrible Russian revolution--a revolution more dreadful than the French Terror in 1793. The Czar was deposed, and word of this was not long in reaching the front line, where groups of rejoicing soldiers hastened to form councils and committees regardless of the discipline that alone could hold them together to an extent to present a solid front to the enemy.

The Germans ceased firing when they learned the cause of the Russians' celebrations, and at once commenced to fraternize with the men they had so recently been fighting, telling the Russians that they desired peace and that the war now would soon be over. Vodka and beer were passed from side to side, and German and Russian soldiers strolled about in No Man's Land without a shot being fired. Nor was this all. A pilgrimage of inflammatory speakers and demagogues commenced to visit the ranks of the Russians, inciting them to revolt against all authority and to drive away their officers. The heads of the soldiers were turned, and good and bad, brave men and cowards, joined in the confusion that was increasing day by day, and the ruin that was sweeping over Russia's fortunes.

The simple heart and mind of Yashka, however, proved to be more astute and better versed in the conduct of war than most of the Russians. She saw what disorder was doing to the army, and worn out in spirit as well as in body, sought leave to return from a war where there was no fighting to her own home.

But finally the idea came to her to form a battalion of women soldiers and shame the men into returning to the front, from which they had been deserting in large numbers. She thought that if the soldiers saw Russian women in the ranks, doing battle with the enemy and proving themselves braver than the men themselves, perhaps they would be shamed into renewing the combat; that if women advanced in the front rank, the men would follow and the war would be resumed. Yashka knew too well that there could be no real peace so long as the Germans remained on Russian soil; and that further war was the only way to drive them out of Russia.

Fired with her idea she went to the leading powers of the Russian Government and asked permission to form a battalion of women soldiers, who were to make every sacrifice, visit the most dangerous parts of the battle front, and unhesitatingly be killed in order that the men might follow them into battle. The Government leaders, including Kerensky, approved of the idea; and Maria commenced to make speeches, calling on the women to enlist beneath her standard in the "Battalion of Death," as her new organization was to be named.

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.

Through the intercession of friends she was sent to Moscow, and there, after further imprisonment, was set at liberty. She had witnessed enough of the Bolshevist horrors to be even a more bitter enemy of their regime than she had been before. She determined to fly from Russia and gain aid from the Allies to carry on a war against them and the Germans alike, and with this end in view was secretly carried aboard the American steamer _Sheridan_ and brought to the United States. Here, for the time being, her career ends. It will remain for the future to show if she takes further part in the affairs of her country for which she so bravely fought, bled and suffered,--but whether circumstances allow her to do so or not, she has carved her name in lasting letters on the tablets of modern history.

HEROES OF FICTION