The story of the Women's Death Battalion is so remarkable that some historians denied it had ever existed. However women soldiers in the Russian Army were an established fact even before the First World War. Although not common it was accepted practice for women who could stand the harsh life to join the ranks and serve as ordinary infantrymen, there were even women officers in some regiments. in 1917 one of the these women soldiers petitioned the Czar to be allowed to raise a battalion of women fight at the front.
