The Crimson Tide

Excerpt-The girl-soldiers stood about carelessly, there in the snow among the silver birches and pines. They looked like boys in overcoats and boots and tall wool caps, leaning at ease there on their heavy rifles. Some were only fifteen years of age. Some had been servants, some saleswomen, stenographers, telephone operators, dressmakers, workers in the fields, students at the university, dancers, laundresses. And a few had been born into the aristocracy.
They came, too, from all parts of the huge, sprawling Empire, these girl-soldiers of the Battalion of Death--and there were Cossack girls and gypsies among them--girls from Finland, Courland, from the Urals, from Moscow, from Siberia--from North, South, East, West.