“We have freedom now, you say,” I argued. “You insist that you do not want to fight. Very well. I will not ask you to fight the Germans. But you have no right to ask me to act against my convictions. We came here not to fraternize but to fight, to kill and get killed. I claim my freedom to get killed if I want to. Then let me fight the Germans at my sector. Let the Germans fight only against the Battalion. We will leave you alone, and you leave us alone.”
The soldiers admitted that this was no more than fair and consented to such an arrangement. When they asked me why I was so anxious to kill Germans I told them that I wanted to avenge my husband who was slain early in the war. For this invention I had only a slight foundation—a rumour that had reached me of the death in battle of Afanasy Bochkarev. Of course, it was an absurd excuse. But I had used it before and I used it afterwards on a number of occasions, and it finally became widely known and believed.
It was exhilarating to be able to do some real fighting again. It is true, we were a mere handful, scarcely two hundred women. But we raised quite a storm. Our machine guns rattled and No Man’s Land was turned from a promenade for agitators and drunkards into a real No Man’s Land. The news spread rapidly along the front of the activity of the Women’s Battalion, and I believe that for hundreds of miles our little sector was the only fighting part of the line. I was naturally very proud of this distinction.
For several days this state of affairs continued. Finally the Germans became so annoyed that they ordered their artillery to bombard my position. There had not been any artillery fire at our sector for some time, and the opening of the big guns caused tremendous excitement. Many of the men were caught in the bombardment and were killed or wounded. The Battalion’s casualties were four dead and fifteen wounded.
The whole Corps was roused to a high state of agitation, and a stormy meeting took place immediately. The men demanded my instant execution.
“She wants war,” they cried, “and we want peace. Kill her and make an end of it!”
But the members of the committee and my friends insisted that I acted in accordance with an agreement. “She only engages her own Battalion in fighting,” my defenders argued, “and leaves us alone. It is not her fault that the German artillery could not find the range quickly and killed some of our comrades.”
When word reached me of the indignation and threats of the men I decided to organize an offensive of my own and die fighting. I requested our artillery to answer in kind the enemy’s fire. The engagement developed into a regular little battle. We were firing furiously.
While this was going on and the soldiers in the rear were holding the meeting the news arrived of the overthrow of Kerensky and the Bolshevists’ victory in Petrograd. It was announced to the men by the Chairman and was hailed with such an outburst of enthusiasm that the shouts almost drowned the rattling of the machine guns.
“Peace! Peace!!” thundered through the air.
“We will leave the front now! We are going home! Hurrah for Lenin! Hurrah for Trotsky! Hurrah for Kollontai!”
“Land and freedom! Bread! Down with the bourgeoisie!”
As the rejoicing was at its height, the ears of the multitude suddenly caught the sound of the shooting at my sector. The men were roused to fury.
“Kill her! Kill them all! We have peace now!” they roared as they stampeded in our direction.
Several girls dashed up to me to tell me of the approach of the bloodthirsty mob. Almost simultaneously the Commanding General rang up on the field telephone.
“Run!” was his first word. “We are all lost. I am escaping myself. Go to Krasnoye Selo!”
I ordered my girls to seize their rifles and whatever belongings they could and run without stopping. To one of the men instructors I gave the direction in which we were to go, asking him to transmit the information to our supply detachment.
Meanwhile the mob was advancing. It encountered in the immediate rear about twenty of my girls, who were engaged in the supporting line.
These twenty girls were lynched by the maddened mob.
Four of the instructors, who made an attempt to defend these innocent women, were crushed under the heels of the savage crowd.
I and my remaining soldiers ran for ten miles. Although we could see no sign of pursuers we ran no risks. We stopped in the woods beside the road to Molodechno. It was dark. We drank tea for supper and prepared sleeping quarters under the trees. Our supply train came up during the night and was intercepted by one of the sentries.
We were up at four in the morning. I had a connection made with the telephone wire running to Army Headquarters at Molodechno and talked to the officer in charge, telling him of our approach and asking for dugouts. The officer replied that Molodechno was overflowing with deserters and that it was as dangerous a place for the Battalion as the front itself.
But what could I do? I had to go somewhere. I could not very well continue living in the forest. It was an awful situation. We had escaped from one mob, leaving twenty victims in its hands, and were running straight into the arms of another, perhaps even more bloodthirsty. So we resumed our march. Within two miles of Molodechno I led the Battalion
