The morning on which I was taken before the military medical commission I was in high spirits. It was a late December day, but my heart was aglow as I was led into the large room in which about two hundred other patients were waiting for the examination which would decide whether they were to be sent home or were considered fit to be returned to the front. The chairman of the commission was a General. As my turn came and he reached the name of Maria Botchkareva he thought it a mistake and corrected it to Marin Botchkarev. By that name I was called out of the crowd. The General shouted the order that was given to every soldier awaiting discharge. “Take off your clothes.” I walked up resolutely and threw off my clothes. “A woman!” went up from a couple of hundred throats, followed by an outburst of laughter that shook the building. The members of the commission were too amazed for words. “What the devil!” cried the General. “Why did you undress?” “I am a soldier, Excellency, and I obey orders without question,” I replied. “Well, well. Hurry up and dress,” came the order. “How about the examination, Excellency?” I queried, as I put my things on. “That’s all right. You are passed.” In view of the seriousness of the injury I had sustained the commission offered me a couple of months’ leave, but I declined it and requested to be sent to the front in a few days. Supplied with fifteen roubles and a railway ticket I left the hospital and went to Daria Maximovna, who had invited me previously to stay with her for a little time. It was a short visit, lasting only three days, but a very happy one. It was so pleasant to be in a home again, to eat home food and to be under the care of a woman who became a second mother to me. With packages for myself and Stepan and the blessings of the whole family following me I left Moscow from the Nikolaiev Station. The train was crowded and there was only standing room. On the platform my attention was attracted to a poor woman with a little baby in her arms, another mite on the floor and a girl of about five hanging on to her skirt. All the woman’s property was packed in a single bag. The children were crying for bread, the woman tried to calm them, evidently in dread of something. It touched my heart to watch this little group, and I offered some bread to the children. Then the woman confided in me the cause for her fear. She had no money and no ticket and expected to be put off at the next station. She was the wife of a soldier from a village in German hands and was now bound for a town three thousand versts away, where she had some relatives. I felt that something must be done for this woman, and I made an appeal to the soldiers who filled the car, but they did not respond at first.