Part FourTERROR
CHAPTER XVITHE TRIUMPH OF BOLSHEVISM
I returned to the front. The trains were frightfully crowded, but fortunately I found accommodation in a first-class compartment. At Molodechno I reported to General Valuyev, Commander of the Tenth Army, and lunched with the staff. The General was painfully surprised to learn of the punishment I had received at the hands of the soldiers.
“Did they really strikeyou?” he asked incredulously, as if he found it hard to imagine the soldiers maltreating Yashka.
“Yes, General, they did,” I answered.
“But why?”
I told him of the German I had wounded as he came over with several comrades.
“God, what has become of my once glorious army!” he cried out.
As I related to him the remaining phases of the episode, he punctuated my story with exclamations of surprise.
At the end of the meal General Valuyev informed methat I had been promoted to the rank of Captain. He pinned an extra star on my epaulets and congratulated me.
I was provided with a car and driven to Corps Headquarters, where I reported to my Commanding General. He and the officers of the Corps Staff were anxious to know of the latest developments in the rear. I told them the impression made upon me by Kerensky and Verkhovsky two days before.
“Their appearance bears witness to the fact that all is lost,” I said.
“And how about the transfer?” the General asked. “The Battalion is waiting for you to come and take it to a more sympathetic sector.”
I answered that orders would soon arrive for the transfer, and showed the certificate authorizing me to command without a committee. The General was glad for my sake.
Meanwhile, my girls learned of my arrival. They formed ranks, desiring to give me a cheerful welcome. My presence seemed to put heart into them. After thanking them for their welcome, I went with them to mess. It was my custom to eat the same food as the girls. Only I seldom ate with them. Before eating, I usually supervised the mess, satisfying myself that there was plenty of food and that all was in good order. I knew from experience that there is nothing like food for keeping up a soldier’s heart.
Was it my promotion that was the cause of a happy mood, or my return to the girls, to whom I had grown deeply attached? I don’t know. But after dinner it occurred to me that it would be the right thing to let the girls have some fun. So I suggested a game, and my soldiers took up the idea with delight. As the game proceeded, many men gathered round the circle inwhich it was going on. They watched longingly, clearly desirous to play too, but not daring to join in for fear lest I should order the girls away. It gave me pleasure to observe how these grown-up children longed to take part in the sports. But I pretended not to notice it.
Finally they sent several delegates to express their desire to me.
“Captain,” the men said bashfully, “we want to speak to you.”
“All right, speak out,” I answered, “only don’t address me as an officer. Call me plain Yashka or Botchkareva.”
“May we be allowed to take part in the game?” they asked, encouraged by my words.
“Yes, but only on condition that you do not molest my girls and consider them as fellow-soldiers only,” I declared.
The men swore that they would behave, and the girls were not at all displeased at the new arrangement. They played for two or three hours, and the men kept their pledge. When the game ended they left with quite a different feeling towards me. It was a feeling of respect and even love, instead of their former one of hostility.
The Battalion remained in the reserve billets for several days. There developed, as a result of that game, a new attitude on the part of many soldiers toward us women. Companies of them would come over and join the Battalion in sports or singing and various entertainments.
The expected order for a transfer did not come promptly. Meanwhile, the time arrived to relieve the Corps in the trenches. I decided that we had had enough rest, and upon our arrival at the fighting line I put myBattalion on a regular war footing. I sent out scouting parties, established observation posts, and swept No Man’s Land with my machine guns and rifles. The Germans were very much agitated. Our own soldiers became excited too, but because of the friendly relations we had established in the rear, they contented themselves with sending delegates and committees to argue the matter with me.
“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 Afanasi Botchkarev. 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 littlesector 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 Trotzky! Hurrah for Kolontay!”
“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 far into the woods and left it there with the supply detachment, comprising twenty-five men. I went to Molodechno alone, having decided to make preliminary investigations and see what was to be done.
Groups of soldiers here and there, in the streets of Molodechno, stopped me with jeering remarks:
“Ha, there goes the Commander of the Women’s Battalion. She demands iron discipline. Ha, ha!” they would laugh, turning to me, “What now?”
With smiles and conciliatory answers I managed to get to Headquarters. I made a report to the Commandant and was assigned some dugouts for the Battalion. There were crowds of soldiers everywhere as I walked to the billets. They began to harangue me.
“You were late with your Battalion,” they said. “It’s peace now.”
“I am always with you, I am myself a common peasant soldier,” I answered. “If you make peace now I will abide by your decision. I am not going to fight against the people.”
“Yes, you are for the people now, but where were youbefore?” they inquired. “You maintained the discipline of the old régime in your Battalion.”
“If I had had no discipline,” I answered, “my Battalion would have become a shameful thing. You would have sneered at it yourselves. Women are not like men. It is not customary for women to fight. Imagine what would have become of three hundred girls among thousands of men let loose without supervision and restraint, and you will agree with me that I was right.”
The men appreciated my argument.
“We think you are right about that,” they assented, and became more sympathetic.
I requested their help in cleaning out the dugouts for my girls, and they gave it cheerfully. I dispatched an instructor for the Battalion, and by night my soldiers were comfortably quartered. Under the protection of sentinels picked from the men attached to my unit we passed a restful night. But our presence offered too good an opportunity for the agitators to let it pass. So in the morning after breakfast, as I started on my way to Headquarters, a small group of insolent soldiers, not more than ten in number, blocked my path, heaping insults upon me.
In a few minutes the ten ruffians were increased to twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred. I tried to parry their jeers and threats, but without success. In ten minutes I was almost surrounded by several hundreds of these ruffians in uniform.
“What do you want with me?” I cried out, losing patience.
“We want to disband your Battalion. We want you to surrender all the rifles to us.”
Now there can hardly be a greater dishonour for a soldier than to surrender his arms without a fight. However, my girls knew that I hated the idea of perishingat the hands of a mob. When they heard of the demand of the crowd they all came out, with rifles in hand.
I made a couple of attempts to argue, but it was apparent that the men came with the purpose fixed in their minds by propagandists. They would not give way and finally cut me short by giving me three minutes to decide. One of the ringleaders stood there, watch in hand, counting the time. Those were moments of indescribable agony.
“I would rather advance against an entire German army than surrender arms to these Bolshevik scoundrels,” I thought. “But it is not my life only that is at stake. Everything is lost, anyhow. They say that peace has been declared already. Have I a right to play with the lives of my girls? But, Holy Mother, how can I, a soldier true to my oath and loyal to my country, order the surrender of my Battalion’s arms without a fight?”
The three minutes were up. I had arrived at no decision. Still, I mounted the speaker’s bench. There was complete silence. The crowd of course expected my capitulation. My girls waited in great tension for their Commander’s orders. My heart throbbed violently as my mind still groped for a solution.
“Shoot!” I suddenly shouted at the top of my voice to the girls.
The men were so surprised that for a moment they remained petrified. They were unarmed.
A volley from two hundred rifles went up into the air.
The crowd dispersed in all directions. My order almost drove the men out of their senses with rage. They ran to their barracks for weapons, threatening to return and do for us all.
The real crisis now arose. There was no questionthat the mob would return, several times stronger, and tear us to pieces. A decision had to be arrived at and carried out instantly. It would take not more than ten minutes for the men to come back. If we did not escape it was certain death.
“In five minutes the Battalion must be ready to march!” I thundered. I sent one of my instructors to the barracks, to mix with the crowd, and later report to me in the woods on the mob’s activity. Simultaneously I directed the supply detachment to follow the road in the direction of Krasnoye Selo. Then I called for a volunteer from among the instructors to take care of our battle flag under oath that he would defend it to his death. Accompanied by three other instructors he was sent ahead with the flag.
All this was done in less than five minutes. It was no ordinary feat for a military unit to form in full marching formation in that space of time. But my girls did it. I sent one squad after another into the woods, leaving with the last squad myself.
I had fixed as our destination a certain clearing in the woods, five miles distant. This distance we covered at break-neck speed. I knew that the infuriated men would follow the road in pursuing us, and I ordered the Battalion to go into the heart of the woods. There were few of us who did not trip on the way several times. Our uniforms were torn by thorns and brambles, and many of us had cuts in our legs and arms. There was little time for dressing the wounds.
A couple of hours later, after reaching the clearing, we heard a distant whistle, the signal of the instructor I had left behind. He was in high glee over his own experience, and in spite of our precarious position we heartily enjoyed his story.
The mob, it appeared, had returned to our billets,as we had anticipated, fully armed. The men were in a ferocious mood and rushed into the dugouts. They were thunderstruck upon discovering that the dugouts were deserted! They ran about like madmen, scouring the neighbourhood, but there was no sign of us. They could not realize that in such a brief space of time the Battalion had been marched away with all the equipment.
“The witch!” they shouted. “She must have spirited them away.”
But this did not seem a plausible explanation to the cooler heads. They telephoned to Headquarters, but received an answer of complete astonishment. Nobody there knew of my sudden withdrawal. The mob started along the road to Krasnoye Selo and soon overtook my supply wagons, which were in charge of old soldiers. These said that they had received orders to leave for Krasnoye, and that they knew nothing of the movements of the Battalion. The mob decided that we were on the same road and sent a couple of horsemen to overtake us. The horsemen, of course, returned empty-handed.
“She is a witch!” many soldiers shook their heads with superstitious awe.
“A witch, undoubtedly!” was repeated in tones of uneasiness by others.
The four men with our flag lost their way in the woods, and seeing that they did not arrive, I sent out about twenty girls and instructors to look for them. They were finally discovered. Next we had to get in touch with the supply wagons, and managed to bring them to our camp. Once this was accomplished we were fairly well established behind the protection of the thickets. There was only one question confronting us: How to get away in safety.
Molodechno was not to be thought of. Krasnoye Selowas also a dangerous place, as our pursuers had warned the garrison there of our approach and had requested that we should be dealt with summarily. The prospects were far from cheerful. I decided to get into secret communication with the Commandant through the instructors.
We camped in the forest for a couple of days, till the Commandant found an opportunity to slip out and come to see us. We held a conference for the purpose of finding a way out of the dilemma.
It was agreed that the career of the Battalion was ended and that nothing remained but to disband it. The problem was, how? The Commandant suggested that he should procure women’s garments for the girls and let them return home.
The plan did not strike me as practical. It was hardly possible to obtain nearly two hundred costumes for us in a day or two. It might, therefore, take a couple of weeks to disband the Battalion, which would not be advisable. I proposed a different scheme, namely, to discharge the girls singly and dispatch them to a score of scattered stations and villages. This plan was adopted, as it did not seem difficult for individual members of the Battalion to board trains or obtain vehicles in the neighbouring villages and get away.
It took a day or so for the Commandant to get ready the necessary documents and funds for all the girls. Then the disbanding began. Every ten or fifteen minutes a girl was sent away, now in one direction, now in the opposite. It was a pitiful finale to an heroic chapter in the history of Russian womanhood. The Battalion had struggled gallantly to stem the tide of destruction and ignorance. But the tide was too strong. It had swamped all that was good and noble in Russia. Russia herself seemed wrecked for ever in that maelstromof unbridled passions. One did not want to live. There remained only the glory and satisfaction of sharing the overthrow of all that had been honourable in the country. Everything seemed upside down. There was no friendship, only hatred. The unselfishness of the days when Tsarism was overthrown, now, after the fall of Kerensky, had given place to a wave of greed and revenge. Every soldier, every peasant and workman, saw red. They all hunted phantom bourgeoisie, bloodsuckers, exploiters. When freedom was first born there was universal brotherhood and joy. Now intolerance and petty covetousness reigned supreme.
As I kissed my girls good-bye and we exchanged blessings, my heart quivered with emotion. What had I not hoped from this Battalion! But as I searched my soul I could find little to regret. I had done my duty by my country. Perhaps I had been too rash when I had imagined that this handful of women could save the army from ruin. And yet I was not alone in that expectation. There was a time when even Rodzianko believed as I did, and Brusilov and Kerensky had thought that the self-sacrifice of the women would shame the men. But the men knew no shame.
My girls had departed. Of the whole Battalion there remained only myself and a few of the instructors. In the evening I made my way to the road where a motor-car was waiting to smuggle me away. The Commandant had arranged for me to go to Petrograd under the personal escort of two members of the Army Committee. They were to join me at the train. The peril lay in the journey to the station. Hidden at the bottom of the car, I was driven to the railway, where the two men took me under their protection. I had decided to go home, to the village of Tutalsk, near Tomsk, where my people had moved during the war.