GERMAN WOMEN FIGHT RUSSIANS.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 September 1917, Page 8

GERMAN WOMEN FIGHT RUSSIANS.

MANY ARE TAKEN PRISONERS BY SLAVIC SISTERS.

A dispatch from Petrograd on Friday, July 2", published in American papers, reads as follows:

When the Russian women's battalion, known officially as the "Command of Death," went into action again.?t the Germans near Smorgon on July 25 they captured a number of women, from whom it was learned for the first time that German women also were fighting on the battle front in Western Russia. Ten wounded heroines of tho women's battalion arrived in Petrograd to-day, leaving t heir commanders, Vera Butchkareff and Maryn, S'krydlofT, a daughter of Admiral Skrydloff, former commander of the Baltic fleet and Minister of Marine, in a hospital at Vitebsk.

Interviewed, the women said it was reported that of the 200 of tho command who reached the front only fifty remained. , Twenty wore killed, eight were taken prisoners, and all the rest were wounded.

''Several times," said one wounded girl, 'Sve attacked the Germans. Especially memorable was our attack at Novospasskv Wood, near Smorgon, where the enemy, hearing the voices of girls, lost their nerve. The result was that many of them were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Among the prisoners were a few women, from whom we learned for the first time that German women also were fighting. "We did not feel the slightest fear of our personal safety. Our passion was to serve the Fatherland. Wo advanced gaily against the foe, with laughter and song, our only unpleasant sentiments being when we first came to the corpses. Once, when replying to the enemy's severe rifle and machine gun fire, we discovered to our amazement that all our men comrades in the neighboring trenches had treacherously fled, leaving us — a handful of women —to face the enemy alone."