It did not seem possible that women could undergo the hardships, the
complete reversal of all their habits and the primitive manners that
necessarily accompany trench life. Incredulity has, however, given way
before actual official reports of women decorated and promoted for
bravery on the battlefields. It seems now that in Europe the women
actually do put on the uniform of the men, fight not only in trenches,
but in the cavalry, and in every way measure up to the standard of a
soldier.
Indeed, they are harder to conquer, it seems, than the men. A recent
semi-official report from Petrograd mentioned that the Russians were
surprised, when they captured a line of trenches along the Bzura River
in Poland, to find a number of German women among their captives. These
women were found in the very first line, with hot rifles still in their
hands.
"There was much more difficulty in making these women prisoners than
the men," reported the officer in charge of the victors. "They would
not surrender until after all their men comrades had thrown down
their arms, and they taunted the men with cowardice. These women were
not at all heavy, unsexed peasants. Some of them showed the marks of
refinement. Inquiry developed that only a few had donned the uniform
because some loved one was in their company. The majority had enlisted
because of pure patriotism.
"I was told that the German authorities," said the officer in charge of
the victors, "do not openly encourage enlistment by women, but they do
wink at it. The men in the trenches, the officers know perfectly well
that this and that soldier is a woman, but they pretend not to know it
officially."
The Russians could not have been surprised at seeing women soldiers,
however, because hundreds of women are apparently fighting in the
armies of the Czar.
Mme. Alexandra Koudasheva is the most distinguished woman soldier in
the Russian army. She commands the Sixth Ural Cossack Regiment, which
has covered itself with honors in many battles in East Prussia. Wounded
twice, Mme. Koudasheva bears the Cross of St. George, that is given
only for exceptional bravery, and many orders of inferior significance.
She is back again to her regiment which consists of many Cossack woman
volunteers, though the majority of the soldiers are men. A few more
successful battles and Mme. Koudasheva will be promoted to a general.
When the war began Mme. Koudasheva entered the army as a volunteer.
She distinguished herself in daring raids on the German Uhlans, and
was made a lieutenant, and soon thereafter a colonel of the same
regiment in which her husband had served two years ago. During the two
months that she has acted as a commander of the regiment she has given
proof of exceptional strategic gifts and courage. She has never stood
behind, but always in front, of her men. Naturally, no man likes to be
surpassed by a woman, and this has given her company a reputation for
unusual bravery.
Colonel Koudasheva is by no means a semi-barbaric adventurer or a
Salome who revels in bloodshed. She is a lady of highest culture and
refinement. Besides being a talented poet and brilliant writer, she is
a fine musician and a passionate lover of sports. She has made twice a
trip on horseback from China, through Manchuria, Siberia and European
Russia to Petrograd. She made the trip alone, and passed the most
dangerous deserts of the two continents without having had any great
difficulties.
"I have felt just as safe in the wildest deserts of Siberia, as I do
in the streets of Moscow or Petrograd, simply because I have absolute
confidence in my ability to command the man, regardless do I meet him
in a fashionable society of a big city, or as a highway robber in the
wildest wilds. A woman--if she only knows her feminine powers--can
conquer any man," thus writes Mme. Koudasheva in her "Diary of Ride
Through Siberia."
This is how she writes in a letter to a friend in New York of one
of her adventures while she was still a lieutenant and was out to
ascertain the strength of the enemy at night:
"It was a ghastly moonlight night of the Fall. A bleak wind whistled
and howled around the ruins of the village, in which there had been
so much human joy before and so much misery after. I was riding with
a company of twenty-five men to trace the retreating enemy. Though
the amphitheatric hills that rose before us seemed dead and bare,
yet mysterious flashes of light appeared here and there, like magic
signals. They warned us of the hidden batteries of the enemy. As we
galloped on, I could see the road strewn with broken boxes, knapsacks,
household implements, dead horses and men which the enemy had left
behind in his hurried retreat.
"'Excellency,' whispered my orderly, I see there beyond the hill a
moving dot. It's probably the head of a "dady"' (as we called the
Germans). As we were in the shadow of the ruins, we could discern
distinctly the bare field in the moonlight. Before us was the first
line of the trenches of the enemy. I pulled my rifle and aimed. A shot.
The dot became a black figure that rose and staggered and fell. It was
a distance of 150 steps, and I could see how a gray ribbon of trenches
stretched in both directions before us--a ribbon that always fascinates
and yet frightens because it is the home of death. More black dots
were visible, moving in the direction where the one before had fallen.
"Little by little I could see dots in every direction beyond the
ribbon. A few figures climbed out and started running toward us. 'One,
two, three!' I whispered and then followed a salvo from my men. The
figures either fell or ran back behind the ribbon. From behind a hill
flashed a light and then the battery of the enemy opened fire at the
village where we were. It was the machine guns. 'Nu-ka, Misha, tickle
the dadies, quick!' was the humorous remark of one of my soldiers to
me. We must have killed and wounded a hundred or more. Then we turned
around and rode away, without having lost a single man and without
having any men wounded."
Mme. Koudasheva is a student of soldier psychology on the battlefield,
as is shown in another letter.
"When you feel the invisible fingers of fate so close to your life,
as on the battlefield, the problems that interest you before and
the feelings that you experience in a peaceful feminine activity
die out and a new view opens. It is not the feeling of sport, it is
not the feeling of being killed, that takes hold of the mind of the
battlefield, but it is a queer, dramatic hypnose, like an actor feels
before opening a play.
"It all seems a huge cosmic play--a stern tragic panorama of life--but
still a play. The whole human organism seems to work against all laws
of nature, for, though you stay in the cold and rain day and night, yet
you catch no cold, no ailments that are usual in everyday life."
Mme. Colonel Koudasheva may require a strict discipline of her
inferiors, but she never applies any punitive measures. She commands
with the most polite words. "Gentlemen, please, would you do me the
favor" is her usual command to the soldiers. "My boys and girls go to
any fire without any forcible measures," she writes. "I just need to
hint at an instruction, and already it is carried out. I have taught
them not to shoot with hate, but to love the man they shoot. And they
do love, which is proven by an incident when once we chased the enemy
into river and when we saw that they would be drowned we all went to
pull them out, and thus saved a whole company."
Another Russian heroine is Natalie Tychnini, a high school girl of
Kier, who has received the decoration of the Order of St. George for
distinguished service at the front. She had arrived at Opatow among
a detachment of volunteers for the campaign against the Austrians.
She was dressed like a man, and passed for a remarkably handsome boy.
She was detailed to carry ammunition to the trenches. She was in the
hottest fire and was wounded twice. The Russians were forced to retire,
and she was left lying on the field.
The Austrian Red Cross workers found her.
"Why, this is a woman!" exclaimed the Austrian surgeon who examined
her. The Austrians nursed her. When the Russians again took Opatow she
was still in a hospital. She was recaptured by them and sent back to
Kier, where she was given her honors.
Austrian women are also fighting. Stefa Falica is a young Croatian who
enlisted with her husband in the same regiment. In this case her sex
was well-known, and she was not forced to use men's clothes. She has
already been made a corporal for her bravery in the field.
A similar case is that of Stanislawa Ordinska, who enlisted,
masquerading as a man, in the Polish Legion of Austria. She was made a
sergeant for bravery shown at the front before it was discovered she
was a woman. Then she was allowed to keep her rank and her gun.
One of the most interesting bodies of women soldiers is the Serbian
organization called the "Legia Smirti," or Legion of Death.
The Legion of Death is composed of women who have been trained in the
use of firearms and in the science of war. In the Balkan States, where
women frequently follow their husbands throughout military campaigns,
acting as pack-carriers, camp-attendants, and even as trench-diggers
and sappers when necessary, it is not unusual for them to take their
places beside their husbands or their lovers on the firing line. There
are many expert rifle shots among them, many indeed who are capable of
taking men's places under necessity. Accustomed to attack in solitary
places, and more or less inured to bereavement, a kind of grim quiet
follows them wherever they are seen.
The Legion of Death is recruited from all classes of women, from the
wives of rich merchants to the wives and daughters of peasants. This
Amazon corps had its origin in the patriotic enthusiasm of a woman
sixty-two years old, whose husband died for Serbia in the war for
liberty against the Turks. The women handle the regulation rifles and
are held in deadly fear by the Austrians and Germans.
Indeed, it seems that on both sides the soldiers dread the women
soldiers more than they do those of their own sex.
Kipling's "The female of the species is more deadly than the male,"
recalls itself, of course. Dr. Hans Hulduckson, writing of this same
phenomenon, said:
"Women are not natural combatants. They do not rush into war for war's
sake. They are without the blood lust that makes fighting a joy for
fighting's sake. They will fight only in desperate straits, and then
only for their honor, their children or the existence of their country.
Standing at one of these last ditches, however, they fight with the
ferocity of tigers. They do battle without rule or reason and to the
death. An Englishwoman, who is endeavoring to organize a company of
women for military training, said that she did not fear that they would
not fight, but the fear was that they might fight too fiercely. They
are the most cruel of combatants when they so far overcome their native
womanly gentleness as to enter into combat.
"A soldier of experience said that he would rather fight a company of
male soldiers than one woman soldier. He explained that woman is too
resourceful in the matter of weapons. War transforms woman for the time
into a beast."