by Amber Lough
Bochkareva cut her off. “If you’re here only for women’s rights, you’ll be disappointed. The army already knows what women can do on the battlefield. There’ve been dozens of other women who have joined up with the men and fought just as bravely. We aren’t here to prove an ideal, but to win a war. That is the only reason anyone should be standing in this room!”
“Yes, but surely it is good for all women to—”
Bochkareva didn’t bother to respond. She continued walking down the line, studying each of us. The committee women’s mouths hung open, and Masha snickered.
“Listen up,” Bochkareva continued. “In the morning, I want you in your boots, trousers, and shirts. Put your civilian dresses away. Send them home. From the moment I wake you at dawn, you’ll forget you’re a woman.” She paused long enough to eye the group from the Women’s Rights Committee. “You’re soldiers now, and that is all.”
She marched out the door leaving a wake of startled women and girls behind her. No one moved for a moment, and then all of us moved at once, like ants in water. Quickly, I disrobed and folded my skirt for the last time, then set it in the bottom of my bag. I left out one set of uniforms and put the rest on top of my civilian clothes, then pulled out the square pieces of linen they’d issued us. With a grin, I laid them out on my cot.
“What are these?” Masha asked.
“Portyanki,” I said.
“You’re kidding,” Masha said, frowning. When I shook my head, she lifted hers up into the air like little flags of surrender, then glanced down at her new boots. “They couldn’t give us stockings?”
“These are easier to issue,” I said.
“But not to wear.”
“I know these,” Alsu said. She slipped her shoes off, laid one of the square linens on her cot, and set her foot onto it. With deft fingers, she wrapped her feet, tucking the stray corners in. Within seconds, her foot was wrapped.
Masha’s jaw dropped.
“You’ve done this before,” I said to Alsu.
“Yes, it’s more common where I’m from. We don’t have stockings in all the shops.”
“Do you have shops?” I asked, laughing.
She smirked. “Not like here.”
“Don’t they bunch up in your boots?” Masha asked, as she slipped her shoes off and tried to copy what Alsu had just done.
“It’s not too difficult,” Alsu said. “My little girls have done it since they were three. And if all the soldier men can do it . . .”
“Right,” I said, taking off my own shoes and starting to wrap my feet as Maxim had shown me. “We’re at least as clever as they are.”
—
I snuggled into my single sheet and tried to find a comfortable position on my board. It was impossible. Resigned, I lay on my back and watched Masha wrapping the portyanki again. She was moving more slowly this time, methodically tucking the ends in.
“What are you doing?” I asked, gesturing at her feet.
“Practicing. If we’re being woken up at four in the morning, I don’t want to have to struggle with these while my hands are still asleep.”
Alsu, on Masha’s other side, chuckled. Then she sat up and gave us a salute. “Good night, new friends.”
Once the lights were out and the whispering had faded word by word till there was nothing but a scratching of consonants on the edges of sleep, I opened my eyes to the darkness.
When I was twelve, I’d snuck into my brother’s barracks one night. He had been there only a week, a new officer-in-training in our father’s regiment. I was hoping to convince him to come back home. While the men were snoring, I tiptoed over to my brother’s bed. But as I approached, I found three other men surrounding him, their bodies bending and jerking while they pounded Maxim with stockings full of something heavy—sand, maybe. He lay curled in a ball, silent and still. Taking it.
On instinct, I grabbed a nearby broom and charged at them. I managed to hit one in the shoulders and knock another onto the floor before the third grabbed me from behind and squeezed the air out of my lungs. Even though we were darkened by shadows and flickering gaslight, what happened next was forever etched in my mind: Maxim got off his bed, took me out of the other man’s arms, and slapped me across the face. His eyes were dark, swirling eddies of shame. When Maxim pointed at the door for me to leave, I ran.
Not a word had been spoken. The only real sounds were those made by the contact of sock-covered weights on Maxim’s skin and the slap across my cheek. My hits with the broom had been as effective, and as loud, as a birch branch brushing at a windowpane.
The next day I received a letter from Maxim saying he had to let them hit him. Otherwise, they’d never accept him as an equal in the regiment, since our father was the commander. He had to prove he was one of them.
The day after that, I received another letter. It was from Ilya Yudenich. He had heard what had happened in the barracks and offered to teach me how to fight. He’d taught me how to march when I was little, so I knew I could take him at his word.
I ignored Maxim until Christmas, but I wrote Ilya back that day.
Lying in the dark amongst the women, I remembered exactly how I felt in my brother’s barracks that night, aware that I didn’t belong there, but determined to face whatever I found.
“Was she so beautiful, Papa?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you said men believe beautiful women, and they do stupid things for them.”
“It doesn’t matter if Olga was beautiful or not. She was powerful and wise.”
10
May 29, 1917
“Get up! Get up and put your boots on! The Kaiser’s men shoot at dawn!”
I bolted from the bed and started slipping on my trousers. Some had wisely slept in their clothes, and they were already slipping on their boots and hats. Envying them, I struggled with the buttons going up the front of my tunic.
“You have exactly five minutes to be outside in formation!” Bochkareva shouted. Then she was gone and I could nearly taste the panic in the air.
With a prayer for my brother, I cinched his left-behind belt around my waist. The trousers didn’t fit right because they’d been made for men, but I was confident they’d stay up. I shoved my wrapped feet into the boots—hard, cold leather that would probably rip my feet to shreds before the end of the day. There was nothing to be done about that. I grabbed my cap and raced out of the room, Masha at my heels.
A slithering fog lay heavy on the courtyard, sucking the heat from our bones. My eyes were still dazed, and I rubbed at them as Masha and I ran to the other women and girls, trying to find a place to stand. They were lining up, but no one knew what they were doing. Now that we were all out in the open, all together, I could fully appreciate how many women made it through the night. There must have been a thousand women milling around and rubbing sleep from their eyes. A thousand women without any idea on how to get into formation.
They shuffled into four long rows, but their height was uneven and the rows were as straight as the path of a drunkard. I glanced at Sergeant Bochkareva and the other instructors, all men, and saw by their expressions that they had noticed this. Sergeant Bochkareva’s eyebrow was raised expectantly, and I knew we only had a minute before she rained hell on us for our sloppy alignment. I’d seen it all before when I would hide in the corners of the Field of Mars and watch the men train.
This was my chance. If I was going to make my father proud, I couldn’t just join the women’s battalion. I needed to be a leader.
I stepped out from the group, terrified of what I was about to do even though someone needed to. I went to the front and turned to face the women.
“Soldiers!” I shouted, but my voice was hoarse and only the front row seemed to have noticed me. I tried again, pushing up from deep within my chest. “Soldiers! We need to organize our columns!”
There was some muttering, and I heard a few call out, “What’d she say?”
I cupped my hands
over my mouth. “We need to line up by height!”
Now they were all looking at me. Some had taken me seriously and looked like they were waiting for instruction.
“If you’re taller than the woman in front of you, tap her and take her place.” Amazingly, they did it. It took longer than it should have, and I knew we’d passed the five minutes we’d originally been given, but Sergeant Bochkareva was waiting it out. I glanced at her over my shoulder. She was watching me, but not with scorn. If anything, she looked pleased, so I faced the women again. “Now, turn to your right and look at the person in front of you. Tap her shoulder if you’re taller and take her place!”
This time they were quicker. When that was all done, I had them turn back to me, and then I swiveled around like Ilya had taught me and gave Sergeant Bochkareva a salute.
“All present and accounted for, Sergeant.” It was what the soldiers always said after they’d gotten their battalions in line.
“Is that so?” she asked. She marched up to me and stopped one pace away. “How can you be sure they’re all present if you haven’t called roll?”
I swallowed, and she winked.
“Well, shit. You got them in line, Pavlova. It looks like we’ll get you all trained in time.”
After she dismissed me, I ran to the back where I discovered a hole in the last line. There, I caught my breath and ran through what I’d just done. Although I’d been afraid, I had stood in front of a thousand people and told them what to do. And they had listened to me.
Someone started counting us, which seemed easier than calling roll, and I took stock of our surroundings. I now noticed the male officers who’d been tasked to train us.
I counted four of them. I wondered how many of them were happy to take on the challenge, and how many doubted what we could do. They stood at the edge of my vision, observing us with blank faces. One officer, the lieutenant, watched Sergeant Bochkareva more than us, as if to ensure she did her job well.
When they finished counting, the men dispersed around us. One went to the front, saying something to Sergeant Bochkareva, and then turned to us. He spread his legs casually and stretched his neck in a slow, purposeful roll.
“At ease, recruits. I’m Sergeant Zapilov. I’m here to help train you. I don’t want to make assumptions, but since you’re women, I wonder if you can run very far.” He was taunting us. If Maxim and Ilya were here, they would probably remind me that this was one way army officers motivated their recruits.
Slowly, the girl beside me pulled her ankle up behind her and stretched her leg. She seemed eager to be off and running. I caught her smiling at me, urging me to do the same.
One by one, the formation yielded as the women started to stretch. A few did the usual exercises school children perform at the start of the day, reaching for their toes and then up at the bright blue sky.
After a minute, Zapilov gave us a nod. “Run behind me.”
He turned and jogged away, kicking up flecks of gravel that skittered across the courtyard and hit the toes of the first line of women. Sergeant Bochkareva was at the side now, shouting for us to move. Like an accordion pulling apart to breathe, we staggered forward and ran after Zapilov. I quickly spotted Masha bobbing amongst the women in front.
The girl beside me sprang from each step easy as a deer, even though her new boots clomped and she had to pull up her trousers every few steps. While we ran, the wool of my too-large trousers rubbed together and we hadn’t made it once around the courtyard before it started to chafe.
“Catch up to the front!” Sergeant Bochkareva yelled at a handful of women in the middle who’d slowed down. Sergeant Zapilov was taking us in a circuit within the courtyard without so much as a glance at the gates that led out into the city proper. “Running together will keep us alive. If you strike off alone, you’re an easier target! Always stick together.”
The women in the middle sped up, but Bochkareva wasn’t done with us. “Take a look behind you. If you’re too far ahead, make adjustments. We are a battalion, not a herd of reindeer!”
I snorted at this because I’d heard it before. When I trained with Ilya, he’d made me run behind the other formations. I was never allowed within their ranks, but I was close enough to hear the sergeants shouting insults and motivational quips. I heard their songs, their shouts of triumph, and their groans. What we needed now was a song to keep us together, but I was not going to volunteer for that.
“You know what you’re doing,” remarked the girl soldier next to me. She wasn’t breathing heavily at all.
“I used to run a lot.”
“I don’t think anyone else knows how.”
We circled the courtyard two more times before Sergeant Zapilov slowed us down to a walk. He turned to face us, walking backwards now, and took stock. We had thinned out. A least fifty women had fallen out and were walking gingerly along the edge of our circuit.
“You’ll have to do better than that next time,” he said.
His voice echoed off the buildings: next time, next time, next time.
I nodded as if he’d spoken to me in particular. There was a blister forming on my heel, and it burned, but I couldn’t let it slow me down.
Once the other women rejoined the ranks, we were escorted to the dining hall for kasha and cream, smoked salmon as thin as tissue paper, and steaming cups of tea. It was gone within minutes, and the women who’d started the meal with delicacy were now scrambling to get the last bites off the tables. No one was sure when we’d eat next, or what they’d have us do now. The threat of the unknown stripped away any inhibitions. With so many women grabbing for the last spoonful of kasha, there was no room for table manners.
“I’m training soldiers, not pigs!” Sergeant Bochkareva snapped. “You’ll get fed enough, don’t fight over it.”
Over the next several hours, we learned how to march, how to walk in formation, and how to swing our arms. By midday, we began to feel less like a collection of stray cats, but we were still an unimpressive sight.
After our midday meal, a woman behind me voiced what many of us must have been thinking. “If we march like this in battle, we’ll have no chance of winning the war.”
Sergeant Bochkareva’s lips pressed into a thin, white line, as though she was doing her best to keep certain words from exploding out of her mouth. Then, with a sharp glance at the perpetrator, she called for the battalion to halt.
“Trust that I am training you quickly and thoroughly for the front. Learning how to march is what teaches you how to listen to one another’s movements. It’s how you become a unit. We won’t fight this way. Tomorrow, we learn how to do that.”
She said something to one of the trainers, and then marched ahead to another group of recruits. It wasn’t long before we could hear her shouts across the courtyard, cutting into someone for turning left when everyone else turned right.
That night we fell onto our boards, exhausted. Masha sewed the chevrons onto our extra tunics while I took care of our boots, buffing the dirt off them. When she wasn’t looking, I took stock of my right heel. The skin had slid off and was stuck in the weave of my portyanki. Gingerly, I pulled off the extra skin. The blister had come and gone, but now I was left with a bright pink hole in my skin. As smoothly as I could, I rewrapped the linen portyanki around my foot, making sure to add extra padding at the heel.
I had it all done before Masha finished stitching up the last of the chevrons. She was doing Alsu’s now and had one of the pins stuck between her lips, her brow furrowed in concentration. Even with her hair shorn off, with the pin stuck there and her lips pursed, she looked like a girl fixing her brother’s uniform before he ran off to play soldier.
I stretched my legs out on the board. “Anything else we need to do?”
Alsu huffed. “We could eat again.”
Masha tossed the tunic at Alsu, who caught it in the air. “I am dead. My body aches so much I can hardly move. And these boards! How does she expect us to get any sleep? I think
the floor would be more comfortable.”
“Except for the rats,” I said. No one laughed.
We hadn’t been issued nightclothes, so we kept our tunics and trousers on, tucking our greatcoats beneath us as pillows. I looked around and saw that everyone was doing the same, some lying on top of the sheet and some wrapping themselves in it like swaddling clothes, but all of us kept our uniforms on.
“If you can’t sleep, I can tell you a Tatar bedtime story,” said Alsu. Masha snorted, and Alsu rolled onto her side, facing the two of us. “It works on my daughters. Should work on you two.”
“Goodnight, Mama Alsu,” I said and laid my forearm over my eyes to block out the late-night sun peeking through the curtains. One of the women had pulled the curtains shut, but the light broke through anyway, scattering across the women in sharp stripes.
That night, I barely thought of Maxim or my father. I could barely think of the war itself. My mind grew sluggish, my body heavy, and I was out before my fears could find me.
“Olga had her people refrain from drinking the mead they’d brought, and when Prince Mal’s men were drunk, her people killed them all.”
“All of them? There weren’t any who snuck away?”
“They say five thousand people were massacred.”
“This is a really awful bedtime story, Papa.”
11
June 3, 1917
There was no time to rest or heal when you were training to be a soldier. My nose was four inches from the dirt and my arms were shaking as they tried to hold me up. My body screamed, but I would not allow myself to rest on the ground.
One of the instructors stepped closer and crouched beside me. The gravel and dirt scraped beneath him as he bent down.
“Your back isn’t straight.”
It was Sergeant Brusilov, one of the quieter instructors. He rarely spoke, but when he did the words went straight to your bones. This time, his voice somehow filtered through my body’s agony and I pulled my stomach tighter. My back straightened.