FREE ARTICLE: Women's Battalion of Death, 1917
I seem to have sailed past 250 posts here on Substack without noticing, so here’s a present…
Maria Bochkareva was a peasant woman from Siberia. Married at 15, Before the First World War she is said to have left two husbands, worked in a brothel and spent time in voluntary exile. With permission direct from the Tsar, she served as an NCO with the 25th (Tomsk) Reserve Battalion. After the abdication, she approached the Provisional Government with the idea of an all-female battalion. She thought that men would not continue to refuse to participate in the war if they saw women going into battle. In 1917, having been commissioned, Maria took her girls into action near Smarhon near Minsk and became the first Russian woman to command a military unit. In this extract, Maria, who dictated her memoirs during a spell in the USA, gives her [occasionally dubious] version of the absurdity that was, at times, the Kerensky Offensive:
The night was passed in great tension. As the hour fixed for the beginning of the attack approached, strange reports reached me. The officers were uneasy. They noted a certain restlessness among the men and began to wonder if they would advance after all. The hour struck three. The Colonel gave the signal. But the men on my right and to the left of Captain Petrov would not move. They replied to the Colonel’s order with questions and expressions of doubt as to the wisdom of advancing. The cowards !
“Why should we die?” asked some, “What’s the use of advancing?” Remarked others.
“Perhaps it would be better not to attack,” expressed the hesitation of many more.
“Yes, let us see first if an offensive is necessary,” debated the remaining companies.
(Wikipedia)
The Colonel, the Company Commanders and some of the braver soldiers tried to persuade the regiment to go over the top. Meanwhile. day was breaking. Time did not wait. The other regiments of the corps were also hesitating. The men, raised to a high pitch of courage by Kerensky’s oratory, lost heart when the advance became imminent. My Battalion was kept in the trench by the cowardly behaviour of the men on both flanks. It was an intolerable situation, unthinkable, grotesque. The sun crept out in the east, only to shine down upon the extraordinary spectacle of an entire corps debating upon their Commander’s order to advance. It was four o’clock. The debate still continued heatedly.
The sun rose higher. The morning mist had almost vanished. The artillery fire was slackening. Still the debate continued. It was five o’clock. The Germans were wondering what in the world had become of the expected Russian offensive, All the spirit accumulated in the Battalion during the night was waning, giving way under the physical strain, which we were enduring. And the soldiers were still discussing the advisability of attacking!
Orders were given to the artillery to continue the bombardment. All day the cannon boomed while the men argued. The shame, the humiliation of it ! These very men had given their words of honour to attack! Now fear for the safety of their skins had taken possession of their minds and souls. The hour of noon still found them in the midst of the debate! There were meetings and speeches in the immediate rear. Nothing more stupid, more empty of meaning could be imagined than the arguments of the men. They were repeating in stumbling speech those old, vague phrases that had been proved false again and again, to the complete satisfaction of their own minds. And yet they lingered, drawn by their faint souls towards doubt and vacillation.
The day declined. The men had arrived at no final resolution. Then, about seventy-five officers, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Ivanov, came to me to ask permission to enter the ranks of the Battalion for a joint advance. They were followed by about three hundred of the most intelligent and gallant soldiers in the regiment. Altogether, the Battalion’s ranks had swollen to about a thousand. I offered the command to Lieutenant-Colonel Ivanov as to a superior, but he declined. Every officer was provided with a rifle. The line was so arranged that men and women alternated, a girl being flanked by two men. The officers, now numbering about a hundred, were stationed at equal distances throughout the line.
We decided to advance in order to shame the men, having arrived at the conclusion that they would not let us perish in No Man’s Land. We all felt the gravity of the decision. We had nothing to justify our belief that the men would not abandon us to our late, except a feeling that such a monstrosity could not happen. Besides, something had to be done. An offensive had to be launched soon. The front was rapidly deteriorating to a state of impotence. Colonel Ivanov communicated to the Commander by telephone the decision of the Battalion. It was a desperate gamble, and every one of us realized the grimness of the moment.
The men on our flanks were joking and deriding us.
“Ha, ha! The women and officers will fight!” they jeered.
“They are pretending. Who ever saw officers go over the top like soldiers, with rifles in hand?”
“Just watch those women run!” joked a fellow, amid a chorus of merriment.
We clenched our teeth in fury but did not reply. Our hope was still in these men. We clung to the belief that they would follow us over the top and, therefore, avoided giving them cause for offence.
At last the signal was given. We crossed ourselves and, hugging our rifles, leaped out of the trenches, every one of our lives dedicated to the country and freedom. We moved forward under a devastating fire from machine guns and artillery, my brave girls, encouraged by the presence of men at their sides, marching steadily against the hail of bullets. Every moment brought death with it. There was but one thought in every mind: “Will they follow?”
Through the din and crash of the bombardment we suddenly caught the sound of a great commotion in the rear. Was it a feeling of shame that stirred them from their lethargy? Or was it the sight of this handful of intrepid souls that aroused their spirit ? Anyhow, they were roused at last. Numbers had already climbed over the top and were running forward with shouts, and in a few moments the front to the right and left of us became a swaying mass of soldiers. First our regiment poured out and then, on both sides, the contagion spread and unit after unit joined in the advance, so that the entire corps was on the move.
We swept forward and overwhelmed the first German line, and then the second. Our regiment alone captured two thousand prisoners. But there was poison awaiting us in that second line of trenches. Vodka and beer were in abundance. Half of our force got drunk forthwith, throwing themselves ravenously on the alcohol. My girls did splendid work here, destroying the stores of liquor at my orders. But for that, the whole regiment would have been drunk. I rushed about appealing to the men to stop drinking.
Some of my girls were killed outright. The latter almost all behaved ike Stoics. I can see, even now, the face of Klipatskaya, one of my soldiers, lying in a pool of blood. I ran up to her and tried to help her, but it was too late. She had twelve wounds, from bullets and shrapnel. Smiling faintly her last smile, she said: “My dear, it’s no matter.”
The Germans organized a counter-attack at this moment. It was a critical time, but we met the shock of the attack with our bayonets. As usual in such cases, the enemy turned and fled. We pursued them and swept them out of their third line, driving them into the woods ahead of us. We had hardly occupied the enemy’s third line when orders came by field telephone from the Commander to keep up the pursuit so as not to allow the Germans to entrench themselves, with a promise that the supporting corps would start out immediately.
We cautiously sent some patrols into the woods to find out the strength of the enemy. I led one such scouting party, and was able to detect that the German force was being slowly but steadily augmented. It was then decided that we should immediately adyance into the forest and occupy positions there till reinforcements arrived enabling us to resume the advance.
It was early dawn. The Germans being in the thick of the woods had the advantage of observing every movement we made, while we could not see at all. We were met by such a violent and effective fire that our soldiers lost heart and took to the heels by the hundred, reducing our force to about 800, 250 of whom were my girls who had escaped death or injury. Our situation rapidly became critical. The line running through the forest was long. Our numerical strength was wholly inadequate for it. Our flanks were unprotected. Our ammunition was running low. Fortunately, we turned on the enemy several of his own abandoned machine guns. We stripped the dead of rifles and bullets. And we reported to the Commander that we had been deserted under fire by the men and were in imminent danger of capture. The Commander begged us to hold out till three o’clock when the Ninth Corps would come up to our succour.
Emmeline Pankhurst pictured with the Women’s Battalion of Death in 1917 (Wikipedia)
Had the Germans had any idea of the size of our force we should not have remained there more than a few minutes. We dreaded every moment that we should be outflanked and surrounded. Our line was stretched out so that each soldier held a considerable number of feet, our force altogether covering a distance of two miles. Three o’clock came, and the expected reinforcements were not yet in sight. The Germans made an attack on the right lank. My adjutant, Lieutenant Filippov, was now commanding there. As our line was curved, he ordered the machine guns on the left flank to direct a slanting fire at the advancing enemy. At the same time our artillery was instructed to let down a barrage in the same section, and the attack was repulsed. At my request the Commander sent out about hundred stretcher-bearers to collect the dead and wounded scattered between our former line and the captured German third line. About fifty of my girls were dead and more than a hundred wounded.
Meanwhile the sun had risen and time was passing. Our condition grew desperate. We sent an urgent appeal for help to Headquarters. From the other end of the wire came the appalling answer: “The Ninth Corps has been holding a meeting. It arrived from the reserve billets and went forward until it came to the trenches we had held before the attanck. There it stopped, wavered, and began to debate whether to advance or not.”
We were struck by the news as if by some terrible blow. It was crushing, unimaginable, unbelievable. Here we were, a few hundred women, officers, men -all on the brink of a precipice, in imminent danger of being surrounded and wiped out of existence. And there, within a mile or two, were they, thousands of them, with the fate of our lives, the fate of this whole movement, nay, the fate, perhaps, of all Russia, in their hands. And they were debating! Where was manhood and decency? Where was justice? Where was brotherhood?
“How can you leave your comrades and those brave women to certain destruction?” the Commander appealed to them. “Where is your sense of honour and justice and comradeship?” The oficers begged and implored their men to go forward as our calls for help grew more and more insistent. There was no response. The men said they would defend their positions in case of a German attack, but would not take part in any offensive.
There being no immediate prospect of a conclusion of the debate in the Ninth Corps, the Commander ordered us to save ourselves by retreat. The difficulty was to extricate ourselves without being detected by the Germans. I ordered first one group to go back some distance and stop, and then another and then a third group to do the same till we reached almost the fringe of the forest. It was a slow and perilous undertaking, full of anxious moments during the shiftings of the line, but everything went smoothly and our hopes were raised. Our line was drawn in, and we were preparing for the final retreat when terrifie shouts of Hurrah!” Suddenly rang out, almost simultaneously, on both flanks. We were half surrounded! There was no time to lose. I ordered a helterskelter retreat.
The German artillery increased in violence, and the enemy’s rifles played havoc with us from both sides. I ran for all I was worth several hundred feet, till knocked unconscious by the terrifie concussion of a shell that landed near me. My adjutant, Lieutenant Filippov, saw me fall, picked me up and dashed through the devastating fire, the German trench system, the open space that was no man’s land before the offensive, and into the Russian trenches. There the Ninth Corps was still debating. But it was already too late. As the breathless surviyors of the Battalion, bespattered with mud and blood, made their way one by one into our trenches, it became obvious that there was no use in any further deliberations. The offensive had been all to no purpose. The Germans re-occupied, without opposition, all the ground and trenches we had won at such terrible cost. There were only two hundred women left in the ranks of my Battalion.
Wanted by the Bolsheviks, her unit disbanded, Maria fled to the United States in 1918. She later travelled to London, where the War Office gave her a grant to enable her return to Russia. She was trying to form a medical unit for the White Army when she was captured by the Bolsheviks, who executed her as “an enemy of the working class” on 16th May, 1920. She was 30 years old.