The women’s regiment did not have to fight its brothers in arms, however. The woman commander took care of that. She just walked into that mob of waiting soldiers and barked out a command in a voice I had never before heard her use. It reminded me somewhat of that extra awful motor car siren that infuriates the pedestrian, but lifts him out of the road in one quick jump. Botchkareva’s command was spoken in Russian, and a liberal translation of it might read: “You get to hell out of here and let my regiment pass.” It may not have been ladylike, but it had the proper effect on the Russian army, which promptly backed up on both sides of the road, leaving a clear lane between for the women. The women shouldered their heavy kits and under a broiling sun marched the two miles which lay between the railroad and the camp. The Russian army followed the whole way, apparently deciding that the better part of valor was to laugh at the women, not to fight them. Botchkareva must also have decided that the first thing to be done was to give those men to understand that whether the regiment was funny or not it would have to be treated with respect. As soon as we reached our barracks and disposed of the heavy loads, she made a little speech in which she said that here we were, and while we would be obliged to mingle with the men, relations would be kept formal. The men must be shown that the women were entitled to the same camp privileges as themselves, and were no more to be molested or annoyed than any other soldiers. We had had a long, hot journey, she ended, and the first thing we were going to do was to go down to the river and have a nice swim. So with towels around their necks the 250 women made gayly for the river. I trotted along on the commander’s arm. At least a thousand men went along, too, but just before we reached the swimming pool under a railroad bridge, Botchkareva turned around and delivered another of those crisp little commands. The men stopped in their tracks as if she had thrown some kind of freezing gas at them, and we went on. It was a lovely swimming pool, clear and cold and fringed with sheltering willows. The women peeled off their clothes like boys and plunged in. As we dressed afterward I looked at them, heads shaved, ugly clothes, coarse boots, no concealments, not a single aid to beauty, but, in spite of it all, singularly attractive. Some of course were homely, primitive types. Purple and fine linen would not have improved them much. But some who would not have been especially pretty as girls were almost handsome as boys. A few were strikingly beautiful in spite of their shaved heads. You observed that they had good skulls, nice ears, fine eyes, strong characters, whereas in ordinary clothes they might have appeared as pleasingly commonplace as the girl on the magazine cover.