Born a peasant in northern Russia, Maria Bochkareva lives in Siberian exile with her politically radical husband. With the outbreak of World War I she seizes the first opportunity and escapes Siberia to enlist in the Russian Army. Overcoming discrimination and maltreatment, she enters the ranks on the eastern front, where she fights the German invasion, wins the respect of her male comrades, and resists the rising Bolshevik tide.

During her life in the trenches, Bochkareva became the first female officer in the Russian Army and organized the Woman’s Battalion of Death, an all-women military unit intended to inspire the demoralized troops during the last year of the war. Conflicts with the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution forced her to escape to America, where she dictated her autobiography to Russian journalist Isaac Don Levine.

After meeting with Woodrow Wilson and King George V to appeal for an Allied intervention in Russia’s civil war, she returned to Russia in 1918 and attempted to form another battalion. She was captured by the Bolsheviks and executed on May 16, 1920.