A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines Part 27

The position of Belgium was peculiar in many ways. Not only did it lie as a little and weak nation between the great armed powers of France and Germany, exposed to the advance of an invading army in case of war, since it was the most convenient way from one country to the other, but its position on the coast made it a favorable vantage ground from which Germany might launch an attack on England. This geographical situation of Belgium has caused it throughout history to be the scene of some of the greatest battles that have ever been fought, and has gained for it the name of "the c.o.c.kpit of Europe."

Even for its size, Belgium was in a woeful state of military unpreparedness for war, because it was supposed to be exempt from conflict through an agreement of the great powers. All the great nations of Europe had decided that it was safer and better to make Belgium neutral ground, and one and all they had promised to protect the neutrality of this little state with force of arms if necessary.

This, as we have said, had given the Belgians a feeling of security.

They believed that even if war broke out, Belgium would not be forced into the conflict, but sinister signs of danger, like the distant warnings of a hurricane, gradually obtruded themselves before King Albert's clear sighted vision. He received letters, not from one but from many sources, warning him that the Germans had decided in secret council to send their invading armies across Belgium in case of war with France, and he had seen only too clearly that German spies and military experts were mapping out the country for their own secret ends. So Albert struggled to increase the army and secured the pa.s.sage of a favorable bill in October, 1913.

But the iron forces of Germany were forged and ready; the uniforms and equipment of her invading hordes were packed away in her storehouses and a.r.s.enals. Only the stroke of a pen was needed to loose the blind forces and mighty armaments of a war greater than any that history has known. King Albert's efforts in behalf of the Belgian army were too late, although he did not know it at the time.

In the summer of 1914, Albert went to Switzerland on a vacation, but his fear that Germany was preparing for speedy war forced him to return to Belgium in the middle of his holiday. And events soon proved that he was justified. War leaped up over night like a devouring flame, and immediately the German Government sent to Belgium a threat which declared that it was the purpose of the German High Command to move German troops across Belgium, and that the Belgians would resist at their own peril.

Many a ruler would have acceded to the terms that Germany gave. If a small boy is confronted by a trained pugilist of great weight and gigantic stature, surely none can blame the boy for consenting to the pugilist's demands. None could have blamed King Albert if he had yielded to such force and accepted the tyrant's terms. But the King determined to defend his country to the last drop of Belgian blood, not sparing his own, and the Belgians sent the following reply back to the German war lords:

"The German ultimatum has caused the Belgian Government deep and painful astonishment, and Belgium refuses to believe that her independence could only be preserved at the cost of violating her neutrality."

And Albert grimly added to some of his followers, "Germany appears to believe that Belgium is a road, not a country."

The German armies entered Belgium, and soon the roar of the guns was heard almost from one end of the little nation to the other. King Albert at once put on his uniform and took to the field with the Belgian army. The Germans laid siege to the Belgian fortress of Liege, expecting to overpower it easily. They advanced against it in ma.s.s formation, only to be met with such a hail of machine gun fire that they numbered their dead by thousands. The little Kingdom of Belgium had thrust a stick between the cogs of the great German war machine, and by doing so saved the world from a German victory. By delaying the Germans at Liege they allowed the French the vital time to organize their army and mobilize on the frontier, and by the splendid and stubborn resistance that the Germans encountered in Belgium the English too were given a breathing s.p.a.ce. On the breast of this weak nation fell the whole weight of the mailed fist, and while the result was inevitable the burden was bravely supported.

Liege fell at last, and the Germans moved onward, in spite of attacks by the Belgians that temporarily halted them. With their great 42 centimeter howitzers the Germans pulverized the forts that held out against them and soon compelled King Albert to s.h.i.+ft the seat of Belgian Government to Antwerp. Albert himself, however, stayed in the field with his army and when it fell back he was among the brave men that covered the retreat. He seemed to be everywhere that he was needed, and often in the front line the Belgian soldiers would be cheered by the sight of their King loading and firing a rifle by their side, in the place of some wounded comrade.

The King combined shrewdness with bravery. He ordered Brussels not to resist the German horde, but he fought to the knife wherever resistance would be effective. While the British were yet far away and the French were unable to help, Belgium alone held the enemy in check, and Belgium was animated more by the spirit of their King than by any other cause.

It has been said in turn that each one of the Allied Nations won the war. And this is true of them all. Without the aid of the British navy, the bravery of the French army, the fresh strength that America lent to the fight, the Germans must have conquered. But it is practically certain that they would have won if Belgium had not withstood them.

With their forces once in Paris and the French and British forces separated no human power could have triumphed against the Kaiser--and it remained for little Belgium to delay him to such an extent that Joffre was able at last to beat the Germans at the Marne and save the world.

Then the Germans turned their guns against the city of Antwerp and soon the giant sh.e.l.ls from the monster howitzers were picking up whole buildings in the force of their blast and scattering bricks and timbers broadcast in cras.h.i.+ng explosions. Queen Elizabeth had remained with the King, serving as a nurse in the hospitals and doing what she could to relieve the suffering of her people, but when it was seen that Antwerp must fall she decided to take her children to a place of safety. King Albert's eldest son served as a private with a Belgian regiment, but his brother and little sister were too young for any service and were taken to England by the Queen. She refused to remain, however, but returned to the stricken country to take her place with the remainder of her subjects who had not yet received the yoke of German slavery.

Albert refused to allow his army to be driven from Belgian territory.

"It would be better to die here," he declared, "than in a foreign land." And always he was with the army, directing its strategy or wielding a weapon himself. "My place is with my brave soldiers," he declared.

All through the sinister days of the war the King's spirit did not weaken. When the Germans were pus.h.i.+ng on again toward Paris in the spring of 1918, he kept his head cool and his heart composed. Then the gray lines broke, and the tide turned. The Allied Armies swept onward and the Germans retreated pell mell to save themselves from utter ruin.

Back from the ruined villages and the oppressed and tortured countryside the German hordes retreated, and King Albert and Queen Elizabeth triumphantly took possession once more. Their children had returned and the royal family had pa.s.sed the last year of the war within sound of the guns on the Nieuport front. Their hour of triumph was now come and they entered Brussels after four years of exile.

Their entry was planned to be as glorious and beautiful as possible and it is needless to say with what rejoicing they were received. Allied troops marched past in review, and the King and Queen were accompanied by the most famous generals of the Allied armies. The soldiers of the Belgian army were crowned with flowers when reviewed by the King that so bravely led them.

Peace terms were drawn up and the Germans compelled to repay the Belgians to the last penny for the havoc and vandalism they had wrought. And it is a kind of poetic justice that Albert was reigning, while the Kaiser fled from his own country to cling to the skirts of another weak little power that he would surely have violated as remorselessly as he violated Belgium if it had chanced to stand in his way.

In 1919, twenty-one years after his first trip to this country, King Albert with Queen Elizabeth came to the United States again. They received a warm welcome from one end of the country to the other and the good wishes of all Americans have gone back with them to the wrecked and devastated land that they are striving to restore. Whether King Albert will perform as great work in reconstruction as he has already performed as a soldier and a King the future will decide, but he has already gained an immortal place in the history of the world.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

MARIA BOTCHKAREVA

Not since the time of Molly Pitcher has there been a woman soldier so famous in her own country as a Russian girl named Maria Botchkareva, who fought beside the men in the Russian army in the World War and afterward became the commander of a battalion of women soldiers, who called themselves the "Battalion of Death." It is only because the World War was so huge that the name of this girl is not known everywhere. Not only did she make as good a soldier as a man, but she was decorated for bravery. She carried to safety out of No Man's Land on her own back nearly a hundred wounded Russians, while the sh.e.l.ls burst and the bullets flew around her, and in the course of the war she was wounded four times.

Maria Botchkareva, who is still living, was born in 1889, the daughter of a Russian fisherman, who was originally a serf. He was too poor to buy a wagon to market his fish, and was compelled to sell them at less than the market price to traveling pedlers. Her mother did manual labor for twelve hours a day to earn five cents. Starvation was constantly at the door, and the father was of a surly and cruel disposition, and frequently beat his wife and his little children.

When quite a young girl Maria became a servant in the family of a Russian army officer, and when still young she married a soldier named Afanasi Botchkarev, who gave her her present name. He beat her so often and treated her so brutally when he was drunk that she tried to drown herself, but was saved because some workmen had seen her plight.

Shortly afterward she ran away from Botchkarev and worked her way to the town of Irkutsk in Siberia.

There she underwent many adventures. Her great strength enabled her to work as a man in a gang of laborers who were paving the courtyard of Irkutsk prison with asphalt, and she continued this work for a year, until she became ill and forced to go to a hospital.

War broke out between Russian and Germany. It was the beginning of the great war that was to shake the entire world, and echoes and rumors of terrible events were not long in reaching even so remote a town as Irkutsk. Soldiers commenced to go away to the front and stories of defeats and victories were in the air. And although Maria, unlike Jeanne d'Arc, never heard the voices of the Saints, still a voice within her called on her to go to war to save her country.

But how was a woman to go to war? If it had been difficult in the remote past when Jeanne d'Arc was alive, how much more was success beyond her grasp in a country controlled by modern law and the regulations of a well organized national army. But Maria dressed herself in man's clothes and made her way back to her home, beating her way with difficulty on trains that were crowded with soldiers, and taking over two months to accomplish the difficult journey from Siberia.

When she arrived at her native village she found that her worthless husband had been drafted into the army, taken to the front and was listed as "missing." n.o.body knew if he were alive or dead.

Her father and mother were glad to see Maria, but exclaimed in horror and surprise when she told them that she intended to be a soldier.

"You are crazy," they shouted at her. "Women do not go to war! Stay at home with us, for we are old and need your help." But in spite of their entreaties she was obdurate, and going to a clerk in the 25th Reserve Battalion which was quartered there, she declared to him her purpose of enlisting and of fighting in the trenches.

Laughter greeted her on every side. A grinning adjutant took her to the Colonel, who received her kindly, his astonishment only equalled by his admiration for her patriotism.

"But women do not go to war, my dear," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed when Maria told him her decision.

"Nevertheless I intend to go and I desire you to enlist me," the brave girl answered.

The Colonel could not disobey regulations and enlist a woman in the army, but a telegram was sent to the Czar himself, and in a short time an answer was received from the Czar's official headquarters, announcing that Maria Botchkareva was ent.i.tled to become a soldier in the Russian army.

So Maria put on her uniform and was nicknamed "Yashka," a name that soon was known throughout her regiment. Dressed in a man's clothes and bearing arms like a man, she went through the regular drill and fatigue and in a very short time became proficient in handling a rifle which increased the respect in which her comrades held her. They had ridiculed her at first, and made life a burden to her with insults and practical jokes, but she bore these things stolidly and at last won their respect and affection.

The regiment entrained for the front and Yashka went with it. A Russian general heard of the presence of a girl soldier in its ranks and angrily ordered that she be taken from the line and sent to the rear--but Yashka was clever enough to point out that her enlistment had been received by the Czar himself and so superseded the order of the General, who wished to send her home from whence she had come.

The regiment went into the trenches, and Maria, for the first time, heard the roar of the cannon and the whistling of the sh.e.l.ls. Her comrades had jokingly told her that she would run when the first shot was fired, but she minded the bombardment no more than any one else.

The Germans threw over large quant.i.ties of their favorite weapon, gas, and the trenches and the hollows in the ground were filled with the noxious vapors that it was death to breathe, but the Russians put on their gas masks and still went forward.

Then, after serving in the line for some time, the girl soldier had her first experience in more active warfare, for her company was ordered over the top to capture the German sector opposite them, and with fixed bayonets the men moved forward under a heavy fire from the batteries of their own artillery. It was a severe attack, bravely delivered, but doomed to failure because the barbed wire entanglements of the enemy had not been destroyed by the Russian sh.e.l.ls. 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 pa.s.sed 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 against all authority and to drive away their officers. The heads of the soldiers were turned, and good and bad, brave men and cowards, joined in the confusion that was increasing day by day, and the ruin that was sweeping over Russia's fortunes.

The simple heart and mind of Yashka, however, proved to be more astute and better versed in the conduct of war than most of the Russians. She saw what disorder was doing to the army, and worn out in spirit as well as in body, sought leave to return from a war where there was no fighting to her own home.

But finally the idea came to her to form a battalion of women soldiers and shame the men into returning to the front, from which they had been deserting in large numbers. She thought that if the soldiers saw Russian women in the ranks, doing battle with the enemy and proving themselves braver than the men themselves, perhaps they would be shamed into renewing the combat; that if women advanced in the front rank, the men would follow and the war would be resumed. Yashka knew too well that there could be no real peace so long as the Germans remained on Russian soil; and that further war was the only way to drive them out of Russia.

Fired with her idea she went to the leading powers of the Russian Government and asked permission to form a battalion of women soldiers, who were to make every sacrifice, visit the most dangerous parts of the battle front, and unhesitatingly be killed in order that the men might follow them into battle. The Government leaders, including Kerensky, approved of the idea; and Maria commenced to make speeches, calling on the women to enlist beneath her standard in the "Battalion of Death,"

as her new organization was to be named.

The response was instantaneous. So many women offered to enlist that she had difficulty in accepting all of them, and she resolutely weeded out those that seemed unfit, enacting a strict and severe discipline, more rigorous, in fact, than any that had been undergone by the male soldiers. With rifles supplied by the Government, and with men acting as drill sergeants, she trained her girls until they were well versed in the elements of soldiering, and after they had become proficient in the use of the rifle she prepared to entrain for the front, this time an officer with a thousand or more soldiers under her command.