Read Ebook: Yashka by Bochkareva Mariia Levine Isaac Don

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1436 lines and 68176 words, and 29 pages

eating, too. I can hear the clatter of their pans. Why, I can even smell faintly the steam from their soup."

"It is calm now. Only rarely a sniper's bullet crosses the field.... Night, night, night.... How I wish for night! Certainly our men are not going to let all of us perish here. Besides, they must have missed me by now. They surely won't let Yashka, dead or alive, lie in the field. So there is hope."

The thought of my comrades' discovery of my absence gave me new strength. The seconds seemed hours and the minutes days, but the shadows arrived at last, creeping toward the side where the sun had disappeared. Then came darkness and rescue was not long in coming. Our brave stretcher-bearers, aided by some of the soldiers, were out on their pious mission. Cautiously they moved nearer and nearer to the German line, and finally picked me up. Yes, it was Yashka whom they carried into our trenches.

My comrades were filled with rejoicing. "Yashka, alive! God speed you to recovery, Yashka!" I could only reply in a whisper. They took me to the first-aid station, cleansed my wound and dressed it. I suffered much. Then I was sent on to Moscow, where I lay in the Ekaterina Hospital, ward Number 20.

I was lonely in the hospital, where I spent nearly three months. The other patients would have their visitors or receive parcels from home, but nobody visited me, nobody sent anything to me. March, April, May Came and went in the monotony of ward Number 20. Finally, one day in the beginning of June, I was declared fit to return to the fighting line. My regiment was just then being transferred to Lutzk front. On June 20th I caught up with it. The welcome I received surpassed even that of the previous year. Fruit and sweets were showered upon me. The soldiers were in a happy mood. The Germans had just been driven back at this sector by General Brusilov for a great many miles. The country was interspersed with their evacuated positions. Here and there enemy corpses were still unburied. Our men, though overjoyed, were worn out by forced marches and the long pursuit.

It was midsummer, and the heat was prostrating. We marched on June 21st a distance of ten miles and stopped for rest. Many of our number collapsed, and we felt too worn out to go on, but the Commander implored us to keep up, promising a rest in the trenches. It was thirteen miles to the front line, and we reached it on the same day.

As we marched along we observed on both sides of the road that crops which had not been destroyed in the course of the fighting were ripening. The fighting line ran near a village called Dubova Kortchma. We found in its neighbourhood a country seat hastily abandoned by the Germans. The estate was full of cattle, fowl, potatoes and other food. That night we had a royal feast.

We occupied abandoned German trenches. It was not the time for rest. The artillery opened fire early in the evening and boomed ceaselessly throughout the night. It could mean nothing but an immediate attack. We were not mistaken. At four in the morning we received word that the Germans had left their positions and started for our side. At this moment our beloved Commander, Grishaninov, was struck to the ground. He was wounded. We attended to him promptly and despatched him to the rear. There was no time to waste. We met the advancing Germans with repeated volleys, and when they approached our positions we climbed out and charged them with fixed bayonets.

Suddenly a terrific explosion deafened me, and I fell to the ground. A German shell had come my way, a shell I shall never forget, as part of it I still carry in my body.

I felt frightful pains in my back. I had been hit by a fragment at the end of the spinal column. My agony lasted long enough to attract a couple of soldiers. Then I became unconscious. They carried me to a dressing station. The wound was so serious that the physician in charge did not believe that I could survive. I was placed in an ambulance and taken to Lutzk. I required electrical treatment, but the Lutzk Hospitals were not supplied with the necessary apparatus. It was decided to send me to Kiev. My condition, however, was so grave that for three days the doctors considered it dangerous to move me.

In Kiev the stream of wounded was so great that I was compelled to lie in the street on a stretcher for a couple of hours before I was taken to hospital. I was informed, after an X-ray examination, that a fragment of shell was imbedded in my body and asked if I wished an operation to have it removed. I could not imagine living with a piece of shell in my flesh, and so requested its removal. Whether because of my condition or for some other reason, the surgeon finally decided not to operate, and told me that I would have to be sent either to Petrograd or to Moscow for treatment. As I was given the choice, I decided on Moscow, because I had spent the spring months of the year in the Ekaterina Hospital there.

The wound in the spine paralysed me to such an extent that I could not move even a finger. I lay in the Moscow Hospital hovering between life and death for some weeks, resembling a log more than a human body. Only my mind was active and my heart full of pain.

Every day I was massaged, carried on a stretcher and bathed. Then the physician would attend me, probing my wound with iodine, and treating it with electricity, after which I was bathed again and my wound dressed. This daily procedure was inconceivable torture, in spite of the morphine injected into me. There was little peace in the ward in which I was placed. All the beds were occupied by serious cases, and the groans and moans must have reached to Heaven.

At the end of four months I began to feel life stirring once again in my helpless body. My finger could move! What a joy that was! In a few days I could turn my head a little and stretch my arm. It was a wonderful sensation, this gradual resurrection of my lifeless members. To be able to close my fingers after four months of paralysis! It thrilled me. To be able to bend a knee that had been torpid so long! It seemed like a miracle. And I offered thanks to God with all the fervour that I could command.

One day a woman by the name of Daria Maximovna Vasilieva came to see me. I searched my mind in vain for an acquaintance of that name as I asked that she should be brought to my bed. But as I was perhaps the only patient in the ward that had no visitors and received no parcels it may be imagined how pleased I was. She introduced herself as the mother of Stepan, of my Company. Of course, I knew Stepan well. He was a student before the war and volunteered as a junior officer.

"Stepan has just written me," Madame Vasilieva said, "begging me to come and see you. 'Go to the Ekaterina Hospital and visit our Yashka,' he writes. 'She is lonely there, and I want you to do for her as much as you would do for me, for she saved my life once, and has been like a mother to the boys here. She is a respectable, patriotic young woman and my interest in her is simply that of a comrade, for she is a soldier, and a brave and gallant soldier.' He praised you so much, my dear, that my heart went out to you. May God bless you."

She brought me some delicacies, and we became friends immediately. I told her all about her son and our life in the trenches. She wept and wondered how I had borne it. Her affection for me grew so strong that she used to visit me several times a week, although she lived on the outskirts of the city. Her husband was assistant superintendent at a factory and they occupied a small but comfortable dwelling in keeping with their means. Daria Maximovna herself was a middle-aged woman simply dressed and of distinguished appearance. She had a married daughter, Tonetchka, and another son, a youth of about seventeen, who was a student at the high-school.

My friend helped me to regain my spirits, and I made good progress towards recovery. As I gradually regained full control of my muscles and nerves, I used to tease the doctor sometimes:

"Well, doctor," I would say to him, "I am going to war again."

"No, no," he would answer, "there will be no more war for you, my dear."

I wondered whether I really would be able to return to the front. There was that fragment of shell still in my body. The doctor would not extract it. He advised me to wait until I had completely recovered and have it removed at some future date by means of an abdominal operation, as the fragment is lodged in the omentum. I have not yet had the opportunity to undergo such an operation, and I still have that piece of shell in my body. The slightest indigestion causes me to suffer from it even now.

I had to learn to walk, as if I had never mastered that art before. I was not successful at the first attempt. Having asked the doctor for a pair of crutches I tried to stand up, but fell back weak and helpless on the bed. The attendants, however, placed me in a wheel-chair and took me out into the garden. This movement gave me great pleasure. Once, in the absence of my attendant, I tried to stand up alone and walk a step. It was very painful, but I maintained my balance, and tears of joy came streaming down my cheeks. I was jubilant.

It was not till a week later, however, that I was permitted by the doctor to walk a little, supported by the attendants. But I had taken only ten steps, beaming with triumph and making every effort to overcome my pain, when I collapsed and fainted. The nurses were alarmed and called the doctor who told them to be more cautious in the future. I steadily improved, however, and a couple of weeks later I was able to walk. Naturally I did not feel sure of my legs at first; they trembled and seemed very weak. Gradually they regained their former strength and at the end of six months spent in the hospital I was again in possession of all my faculties.

EIGHT HOURS IN GERMAN HANDS

The morning on which I was taken before the military medical commission I was in high spirits. It was a late December day, but my heart was aglow as I was led into the large room in which about two hundred other patients were waiting for the examination which would decide whether they were to be sent home or were considered fit to be returned to the front.

The General shouted the order that was given to every soldier awaiting discharge.

"Take off your clothes."

I walked up resolutely and threw off my clothes.

"A woman!" went up from a couple of hundred throats, followed by an outburst of laughter that shook the building. The members of the commission were too amazed for words.

"What the devil!" cried the General. "Why did you undress?"

"I am a soldier, Excellency, and I obey orders without question," I replied.

"Well, well. Hurry up and dress," came the order.

"How about the examination, Excellency?" I queried, as I put my things on.

"That's all right. You are passed."

In view of the seriousness of the injury I had sustained the commission offered me a couple of months' leave, but I declined it and requested to be sent to the front in a few days. Supplied with fifteen roubles and a railway ticket I left the hospital and went to Daria Maximovna, who had invited me previously to stay with her for a little time. It was a short visit, lasting only three days, but a very happy one. It was so pleasant to be in a home again, to eat home food and to be under the care of a woman who became a second mother to me. With packages for myself and Stepan and the blessings of the whole family following me I left Moscow from the Nikolaiev Station. The train was crowded and there was only standing room.

On the platform my attention was attracted to a poor woman with a little baby in her arms, another mite on the floor and a girl of about five hanging on to her skirt. All the woman's property was packed in a single bag. The children were crying for bread, the woman tried to calm them, evidently in dread of something. It touched my heart to watch this little group, and I offered some bread to the children.

Then the woman confided in me the cause for her fear. She had no money and no ticket and expected to be put off at the next station. She was the wife of a soldier from a village in German hands and was now bound for a town three thousand versts away, where she had some relatives. I felt that something must be done for this woman, and I made an appeal to the soldiers who filled the car, but they did not respond at first.

"She is the wife of a soldier, of one like yourselves," I said. "Suppose she were the wife of one of you! For all you know, the wives of some of you here may be wandering about the country in a similar state. Come, let us get off at the next station, go to the station-master and ask that she may be allowed to go to her destination."

The soldiers were moved and they helped me to take the woman and her belongings off the train at the next stop. We went to the station-master, who was very kind, but explained that he could do nothing in the matter. "I have no right to give permission to travel without a ticket, and I can't distribute free tickets," he said, and he sent us to the military commandant. I went with the woman, having been deserted by the soldiers who had heard the train whistle and did not want to miss it. I waited for another train.

The commandant repeated the words of the station-master. He had no right to provide her with a military pass, he said.

"No right!" I exclaimed, beside myself. "She is the wife of a soldier and her husband is probably now, at this very moment, going into battle to defend the country, while you, safe and well-fed in the rear here, won't even take care of his wife and children. It is an outrage. Look at the woman. She needs medical attention, and her children are starved."

"And who are you?" sharply asked the commandant.

"I will show you who I am," I answered, taking off my medals and cross and showing him my certificate. "I have shed enough blood to be entitled to demand justice for the helpless wife of a soldier."

But the commandant turned his back on me and went away. There was nothing to be done but to make a collection. I went to the First-Class waiting-room, which was filled with officers and well-to-do passengers, took my cap in my hand and went round, begging for a poor soldier's wife. When I had finished there were eighty roubles in the cap. With this money I went to the commandant again, and handed it to him with a request that he should provide accommodation for the woman and her children. She did not know how to express her gratitude to me.

The next train came in. I never before saw one so packed. There could be no thought of getting inside a car. The only space available was on the top of a coach. There were plenty of passengers even there. With the aid of some soldiers I climbed on to the top, where I spent two days and two nights. It was impossible to get off at every station to take a walk. We had to send some one even to fetch the tea, and our food consisted of that and bread.

Accidents were not uncommon. On the very roof on which I travelled a man fell asleep, rolled off, and was killed instantaneously. I narrowly escaped a similar fate. I began to doze and drifted to the edge and had not a soldier caught me in the nick of time I should undoubtedly have fallen off. We finally arrived at Kiev.

That journey on the train was a symbol of the country's condition in the winter of 1916. The government machinery was breaking down. The soldiers had lost faith in their leaders, and there was a general feeling that they were being sent in thousands merely to be slaughtered. Rumours flew thick and fast. The old soldiers had been killed off and the fresh drafts were impatient for the end of the war. The spirit of 1914 was no more.

In Kiev I had to obtain information as to the position of my regiment. It was now near the town of Berestechko. In my absence the men had advanced ten miles. The train from Kiev was also very crowded and there was only standing room. At the stations we sent some of the soldiers to fill our kettles with hot water. The men could seldom get in and out through the entrances, so they used the windows. The train passed through Zhitomir and Zhimerinka on the way to Lutzk. There I changed to a branch line, going to the station of Verba, within twenty miles of our position.

It was muddy on the road to the front. Overhead flew whole flocks of aeroplanes, raining bombs. I got used to them. In the afternoon there was a downpour, and I was thoroughly soaked. Dead tired, with water streaming from my clothes, I arrived in the evening within three miles of the first line. There was a regimental supply train camping on both sides of the road. I approached a sentry and asked:

"What regiment is billeted here?"

"The Twenty-Eighth Polotsk Regiment."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet