AMAZING STORY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20280, 14 April 1934, Page 17 (Supplement)

AMAZING STORY.

Girl’s Adventurous Life -in Russia. WAR AND REVOLUTION. 'J'HE remarkable adventures of a young girl who lived through years of war and revolution, defying death at every turn, was revealed at New York, says the “ Sunday Chronicle.” The girl, Marina Yurlova, left her' native village at fourteen and followed a Cossack regiment with the wives and children of the soldiers. Eventually she found herself alone without a single relative near, and she was adopted into a regiment. She gave the name of Marina Kalesnikova. Marina then enlisted in the Russian Army, and in her book, “ Cossack Girl,” which is causing a sensation in America, she describes her adventures with a volunteer party of twelve who helped to blow up three bridges to prevent the Turks from crossing. She was the only survivor and wounded in the leg. She received the St George’s Cross for her part in the exploit. When she returned to her regiment from hospital she found them facing the Kurds, and gives a horrifying description of one of her companions. “ I took a good look,” she writes, “ not because I wanted to, but because my eyes were fixed, staring in horror. “ He was naked and he was already decomposing in the heat. One arm hung down almost to the ground, for he had slipped during the ride home. There was no hand on that arm. I “They had tied him with his head towards the horse’s head and his fe~t dangling over the horse’s rump. His eyes had been gouged out while he was still alive.” Marina declares that she was a “ runner ” for a field office during the capture of Erzerum and got concus.von through a shell bursting. After, being treated in hospital for shell-shock, she learned to drive a car and to do me oh anical repairs, acting afterwards as an officer’s chauffeur. Casualty. At Erivan, Marina Yurlova joined the Red Cross, and again became a “ casualty,” being the victim of concussion while driving a load of wounded to Baku. She was sent to a sanatorium some miles distant in September, 1917, shortly after word had finallv arrived that the Czar was overthrown. She was told that she must leave, as she was no longer safe. “ Next day I went, and had not gone more than a mile or two before I had my first sight of revolution.” This was the murder of an old Czarist general and his womenfolk by “ an ugly looking mob of soldiers, women and peasants.” Marina and some of the other shellshocked victims managed at last to board one of the infrequent trains t > Moscow. She describes how she saw two officers who were found on the train dip

guised as privates being thrown off the train into a deep, rocky gorge. After a year In a Moscow hospita l , Marina was sent to prison in Kazan as a “ Cossack Jew killer.” Daily she heard the firing squads executing groups outside, but she succeeded in, fleeing to Siberia. Sent to a hospital at Omsk, she escaped and reached Vladivostok after a long tramp on foot across Siberia, accompanied by other officers and men and worrien exiles. Finally she went to a convalescent home in Japan from hospital in Vladivostok. v