RUSSIA’S JOAN OF ARC
“BATTALION OF DEATH”
An English lady residing in Petrograd forwards the following interesting account of Marie Bochkareva, commander of the Russian Women’s battalion, who has just been wounded for the fourth time in the fighting on the Vilna front.
Russia has just passed through such a tremendous upheaval that men here appear to have quite forgotten that they are at war with the Germans. The whole country is absorbed in internal affairs, and the war has gradually been put aside. It has fallen to the lot of woman to remind man that the ruin of the country is at stake if the outer foe is not conquered, and that internal quarrels can be settled when the frontiers are at least guaranteed against a German invasion.
The woman that saved France was Joan of Arc – a peasant girl. Marie Bochkareva, a poor emigrant from the wilds of Siberia, is her modern parallel. The greatest manifestation witnessed in Russia since the first days of the revolution was one that took place on July 3, where this rustic, carried on the arms of a soldier and a sailor, covered with ribbons and showers of flowers, and followed by her valiant battalion, was escorted through Petrograd, with music and jubilation. The crowds lined the streets and cheered her, as was only customary when the Tsar showed himself.
Marie Bochkareva, or simply Yashka, as she has been christened by the men of the regiment to which she belonged, has got much of her warlike spirit from her father, who fought through the whole of the Turkish war, and was left a cripple. Her mother was a hard working woman, with five children, of whom Yashka was the eldest, and she had to go out washing and cooking to earn enough to clothe and feed this flock. At the age of five, Yashka was sent out as nurse to a baby of three. And from that time she has never stopped working. She looks none the worse for it. Finely yet strongly built, with broad shoulders and healthy complexion, she can lift 200lb with the greatest of ease. She has never known fear. Not long ago she remarked that during the past two years she had lived through so much, that there remained but one danger yet to experience, that of flying. Just as she was saying that an aviator came up and offered to take her for a flight, and before the day was out she had exhausted her list of perils.