A COSSACK GIRL'S WAR

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3471, 26 May 1934, Page 5

A COSSACK GIRL'S WAR

STIRRING ADVENTURES. The remarkable adventures of a young girl who lived through four years of war and revolution, defying death at every turn, have been 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 was wounded in the leg. She received the St. George’s Cross for her part in the exploit.-

Marina declares that she was a “runner” for a field office during the capture of Erzerum and got concussion through a shell bursting. After being treated in hospital for shellshock, she learned to drive a motor car and to do mecha'nical repairs, acting afterwards as an officer’s chauffeur.

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 finally arrived that the Tsar 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 1 had my first sight of revolution.”

This was the murder of an old Tsarist 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 to Moscow. She describes how she saw two officers who were found on the train disguised as privates being thrown off the train into a deep, rocky gorge. After a year in a Moscow hospital 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 women exiles.

Finally she wefit to a convalescent home in Japan from hospital in Vladivostok.