“Be silent! How dare you shout like that? I am a General. I will kill you!” Polovtzev thundered at me, trembling with rage.
“All right, you can kill me! Kill me!” I cried out, tearing my coat open and pointing to my chest. “Kill me!”
The General then threw up his hands, muttering angrily under his breath: “What the devil! This is a demon, not a woman! There is nothing to be done with her,” and with his mixed following he withdrew.
The following morning a telegram came from General Polovtzev, informing me that I should be allowed to continue my work without a committee!
Thus ended the dispute caused by the mutiny in the Battalion, which had nearly wrecked the entire undertaking. It was a hard fight that I had made but, convinced of my right, there was no question of retreating for me.
Events have completely justified my conviction. The Russian Army, once the most colossal military machine in the world, was wrecked in a few months by the committee system. Coming from the trenches, where I had learned at first hand what a curse the committees were proving, I realized early their fatal significance. To me it has always been clear that a committee meant ceaseless speechmaking. That was the outstanding factor about it to me. I considered no other aspect of it. I knew that the Germans worked all day while our men talked, and in war, I always realized that it was action that counted and conquered.
XIII
The Battalion at the Front
The same morning on which the telegram came from General Polovtzev there also arrived a banner, with an inscription that read something like this:
“Long live the Provisional Government! Let Those Who Can, Advance! Forward, Brave Women! To the Defence of the Bleeding Motherland!”
We were to march with this banner in the demonstration, that had been organized in opposition to the Bolshevik demonstration fixed for the same day. The Invalids were to march in the same procession. I talked matters over with their chief when we met at Morskaya.
The air was charged with alarming rumours. The Captain of the Invalids placed fifty revolvers at my disposal. I distributed them among the instructors and my other officers, reserving a pair for myself.
The band of the Volynski regiment headed the Battalion of Death, as half the soldiers of that regiment had refused to march against the Bolsheviks, having already been contaminated with Bolshevist ideas, although it was only June.
Mars Field, our destination, was about five versts from our barracks. The whole route was lined with enormous crowds which cheered us and the Invalids, of whom there were about five hundred. Many women on the pavements wept, grieving for the girls whom I was leading into what seemed a conflict with the Bolsheviks. Everybody said: “Something is going to happen today.”
As we approached the Mars Field, where the opposing demonstration was held, I ordered my soldiers to sit down and rest for fifteen minutes.
“Form ranks!” I ordered at the end of that time. We were all more or less nervous, as if on the eve of an offensive. I addressed a few words to the Battalion, instructing them to support me to the end, not to insult anybody, not to run away at the least provocation, in order to avoid a panic. They all pledged themselves to fulfil my instructions.
Before resuming the march the Captain of the Invalids, several of his subordinate officers, and all my instructors came forward and asked to march in the front row with me. I objected, but they insisted, and I finally had to give way, in spite of my desire to show the Bolsheviks that I was not afraid.
The crowds on the Mars Field were indeed enormous. A long procession, with Bolshevist banners, flowed into the great square. We stopped within fifty feet of a Bolshevist cart and were met promptly by a hail of jokes and curses. There were jeers at the expense of the Provisional Government and shouts of: “Long live the revolutionary democracy! Down with the war!”
Some of the women could not suppress their indignation and began to answer back, provoking heated argument.
“When you cry, ‘Down with the war!’ you are helping to destroy Free Russia,” I declared, stepping forward and addressing my turbulent neighbours. “We must beat the Germans first and then there will be no war.”
“Kill her! Kill her!” several voices threatened.
Greatly excited, I rushed a few steps nearer to the crowd. My fingers gripped the two pistols, but in all the tumult that followed, the idea was fixed in my mind that I must not shoot at my own people, common workers and peasants.
“Wake up, you deluded sons of Russia! Think what you are doing! You are destroying the Motherland! Scoundrels!” I concluded as their jeers continued.
My instructors tried to hold me back as the throng swarmed round me, but I tore myself out of their arms and plunged into the thick of it. I worked myself up to such a state of frenzy that I did not cease talking even when a volley of shots was sent into our midst. Then my officers ordered the Battalion to fire. There followed a terrible scuffle.
Two of my instructors were killed, one while defending me. Two others were wounded. Ten of my women were also wounded. Many bullets grazed me, but I escaped till struck unconscious by a blow on the head with an iron bar, from behind. Many of the onlookers were drawn into the scrimmage and the result was a panic.
I recovered consciousness in the evening. I was in my own bed with a physician beside it. He told me that although I had lost a good deal of blood my wound was not serious, and that I should be able to resume my duties soon.
Late in the evening the officer in charge reported that Michael Rodzianko had come to see me. The physician went out to
