Girl Soldiers in World War I: Marina Yurlova and Sofja Nowosiełska

Abstract

The militant patriotism of two girls who wrote dramatic memoirs about their armed service during World War I expands our understanding of the ‘culture of war’ addressed to children (Audoin-Rouzeau, 1996: 770, 1993 passim). It also complicates the widespread assumption that the girl-soldier is a unique modern problem, reflecting changed types of conflict, especially in post-colonial situations of civil war (Dutli, 1990). The stories of their mobilizations are similar: both the Cossack Marina Yurlova and the Polish Sofja Nowosiełska were 14 when war was declared in 1914, and both came from patriotic, well-to-do families; their fathers were mobilized immediately, and both were eager to follow the men. Their autobiographies trace the confusion in which they follow the troops and become integrated into military units, their exploits, their wounds, and their survival through the upheavals that marked the end of the war in both Russia and Poland. These two girls’ actions emerged from a cultural heritage and wartime conditions that (despite national differences) fostered their engagement, along with other girls and boys.