Maria Bochkareva was a Russian soldier who fought in World War I and formed the Women's Battalion of Death. She was the first Russian woman to command a military unit. Maria Frolkova was born to a peasant family in Nikolsko in July 1889. Her father was a sergeant in the imperial army. She left home at sixteen to marry. They moved to Tomsk, Siberia, where they worked as laborers at the outbreak of World War I. In November, she was rejected by the 25th Tomsk Reserve Battalion of the Imperial Russian Army. The commander suggested that she try joining the Red Cross instead. She joined the army by securing the personal permission of Tsar Nicholas II. After three months of training, she was decorated for rescuing fifty wounded soldiers from the field. After she was wounded in the arm and leg, she worked as a medical sister until she returned to the front as a corporal in charge of eleven men. She suffered another injury that left her paralyzed for four months. After she recovered, she returned to the front as a senior non-commissioned officer delivering supplies to a platoon of seventy men. Eventually, she became exhausted from her physical injuries and lost interest in her military post. She was discharged in the spring of 1917. After the abdication of the Tsar in early 1917 due to the February Revolution, she proposed the creation of an all-female combat unit that she claimed would fix the Army's morale problem. She believed that it would shame the men into again supporting the war effort. Once she agreed to lead the unit, her proposal was approved. This was the first women's battalion to be organized in Russia. Her 1st Russian Women's Battalion of Death initially attracted around 2,000 women volunteers. The battalion was blessed at Saint Isaac's Cathedral on June 25, 1917. After a month of training, Bochkareva and her unit became attached to the First Siberian Corps and was sent to the Russian western front where she was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. The unit was involved in one major battle—near the town of Smarhon. She herself was wounded in the battle and sent back to Petrograd to recuperate. Bochkareva was only marginally involved in the creation of other women's combat units formed in Russia during the spring and summer of 1917. Her unit was at the front at the time of the October Revolution. She returned to Petrograd where she was briefly detained by the Bolsheviks. She secured permission to rejoin her family in Tomsk but returned to Petrograd again in early 1918. She claims to have then received a telegram asking her to take a message to General Lavr Kornilov, who was commanding a White Army in the Caucasus. She was rescued, however, by a soldier who had served with her in the Imperial Army in 1915 and who convinced the Bolsheviks to stay her execution. She was granted an external passport and allowed to leave the country. Bochkareva then made her way to Vladivostok, where she left for the United States by the steamship Sheridan in April 1918. She arrived in San Francisco and made her way to New York City and Washington, D.C. She was granted a meeting with President Woodrow Wilson on July 10, 1918, during which she begged the president to intervene in Russia. Wilson was apparently so moved by her emotional appeal that he responded with tears in his eyes and promised to do what he could. While in New York, she dictated her memoirs. After leaving the United States, she traveled to Great Britain where she was granted an audience with King George V. The British War Office gave her 500 rubles of funding to return to Russia. She arrived in Arkhangelsk in August 1918 and attempted to organize another unit, but failed. In April 1919, she returned to Tomsk and attempted to form a women's medical detachment under White Army Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. She was sent to Krasnoyarsk where she was interrogated for four months. Ultimately, she was sentenced to death and executed as an "enemy of the working class". She was shot by the Cheka on May 16, 1920.

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