Half a dozen miles on the other side of the railroad was another and a larger village, equally dismal, but furnished with a church, a wayside shrine, small shops and other improvements. My special friend the Adjutant and I drove over there one day after supplies. We bought chocolate, nuts, sardines and biscuits to relieve the deadly monotony of our daily black bread, soup and kasha. The regiment bought some supplies at little market stalls near the station. Here one bought butter, sausages reeking with garlic, tinned fish and doubtful eggs. At an officers’ store in the vicinity Botchkareva spent some of the money donated in Petrograd for tea and sugar when they were needed, and for a kind of white bread or biscuits. They were hard and shaped like old-fashioned doughnuts, with a hole in the middle through which a string was run. A yard or two of this bread went well with good butter and hot, fragrant tea. As far as food was concerned I was better off in the camp than I was a little later in Petrograd. There was even a fairly good hot meal to be had at the station when we chose to go there, which we did several times. But no amount of good food would have kept our regiment happy in camp very long. The women fretted and chafed and demanded to know why they were kept in that hole. The Nachalnik coaxed and scolded them along, and Skridlova, who was easily the most popular person in camp, reminded them that it took six months to train ordinary soldiers and that they were being especially favored by having the time shortened. Those women went into battle after less than two months’ training, as it turned out, for the evening of the ninth day the Nachalnik came back from headquarters with orders to march the next morning at five. What an uproar followed! Cheers, laughter, singing. You would have thought they were going anywhere except to a battlefield where death waited for some and cruel suffering for many. I wanted to go with them, and would have insisted on going had I known that they were so soon to fight. But orders were merely to advance for further drill under gunfire. I would have been frightfully in the way in the new position, which had no barracks, but only dog tents, just enough to go around. Nothing on earth except the knowledge that I would be depriving some one of those brave women from the comfort of a dry and sheltered bed persuaded me to leave them.