y the Russian shells. Men dropped by the score,
and when the company was finally compelled to retreat there were only
seventy left out of two hundred and fifty that had begun the advance.
Maria was one of the survivors, her woman's heart torn with pity at the
cries of the wounded who had been left dying in No Man's Land. Crawling
back from the shelter of the Russian trenches, she dragged a wounded
soldier to safety and returned for another. All night she toiled
bringing them in until more than fifty owed their lives to her. For
this she was recommended for a decoration for bravery, but never
received it. Later, however, she won her badge of courage for more work
of the same sort performed under heavy fire and in the face of the
greatest obstacles.

Then her own turn came. She was wounded and sent to the rear as a
casualty. When her wound was healed she returned to the front, only to
sustain further wounds and win another decoration. On one occasion she
was captured by the Germans, but an attack freed her from their hands
after she had been a prisoner for a little over eight hours.

In all the fighting that she had experienced this girl personally did
her share, handling a rifle with skill and on several occasions using
the bayonet with as much strength as a man. Her fame by this time had
penetrated beyond her own regiment. The name of Yashka was known
throughout the Russian army, and numbers of curious soldiers crowded
around her when she happened to go to some part of the field where she
had not previously been seen.

Then began the terrible Russian revolution--a revolution more dreadful
than the French Terror in 1793. The Czar was deposed, and word of this
was not long in reaching the front line, where groups of rejoicing
soldiers hastened to form councils and committees regardless of the
discipline that alone could hold them together to an extent to present
a solid front to the enemy.

The Germans ceased firing when they learned the cause of the Russians'
celebrations, and at once commenced to fraternize with the men they had
so recently been fighting, telling the Russians that they desired peace
and that the war now would soon be over. Vodka and beer were passed
from side to side, and German and Russian soldiers strolled about in No
Man's Land without a shot being fired. Nor was this all. A pilgrimage
of inflammatory speakers and demagogues commenced to visit the ranks of
the Russians, inciting them to revolt ag