Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1919-10-12
GIRL RIDES WITH C0SSACKS; STANDS
 HARDSHIPS WELL
Trail, But Red Cross Girl, Also
 Is Unusually Plucky.
Bv Allen Rylev

Omsk, Siberia (By Mail)-I saw her first here at the big American Red Cross hospital, a slight, quiet, brown haired girl, rather pale of face, and with a timidity of manner which at times seemed actual nervousness. She was one of the Red Cross nurses who moved silently and efficiently about the great hospital wards, ministering to nearly thousand men who had come back, maintained and shattered, from the cruel front along the Ural mountains. l remarked to another Russian nurse that the little "sistra" with the brown eyes seemed very frail.
 "Not a bit of it." was the prompt answer. "That girl is tough as the witches of beroyosa (birchwood) which the peasants weave into shoes. She has been a soldier. She rode with the Cossacks."
 One who rides with the Cossacks must indeed be as tough as the withes of birchwood. These horsemen of Asia are not merely daredevils in the saddle, but their endurance is nothing less than a marvel, as is the endur- ance of the stubby little steeds they bestride. Winter and Summer, rain or frost, or burning sun, it seems all the same to them. They drive for ward on whatever mission is abroad, covering long miles by day or by night, sleeping often in the stiff, cramping saddle, ready to fight or to- frolic. Preferably, it often appears, to fight. And this girl, the other nurse went on to tell me, had ridden ,1;+b tho Coccacks o11 yyiptay
 Ural Cold Is Better.
 Winter on the Ural front is not the pleasantly tingling slightly cold sea- son which we of the New York or Chicago or even Portland Maine, rec ognize as the time of King Boreas. Along the Urals the thermometer goes down, down, down until it strikes sixty or seventy below, and the cold cuts in moment by moment and hour by hour without respite or mercy.
 Those who ride with the Cossacks in Winter must be brmiming with the red blood of courage.
 It took some persuading to get the brown-eyed little nurse to tell her story. The persuading was done, in approved Russian fashion, over tall glasses of boiling hot "chal" or tea from the veteran brass samovar in the recreation room of the Russian nurses quarters. After formalities had been exchanged over our tea, lit tie Sophia Volkovia began to talk. A few yards from Vladivostok, raced it's needle over records of American rag time, jazz bands and the latest one- step. It's occidental music, familiar and especially hideous on the batter ed records, made strange accompanl- ment for Sistra Sophia's tale of the Cossacks:
 "Last September I was in Simbirsk. had gone there to visit friends, leav- ing my mother in Petrograd. There was heavy fighting between the Whites and the Reds (the loyalists and the Bolsheviks), and l entered a hospital because there was such terri ble suffering the nurses could not handle all the cases.
 "Then the First Ulansky of Cos sacks came to Simbirek. The Colonel knew his regiment would soon be on the march against the Bolsheviks, and he asked the Russian hospital for a feldsher Ca feldsher is a male nurse or attendant).
 "The Cossacks were already suffer- ing. I saw men, badly wounded, stay in the saddle because they did not want to leave their comrades. They did not want to be left behind when the regiment took the field. And l wanted to help. So volunteered. l asked the commander if he would take me.
 "He smiled. I remember quite we'll that smile. It was kind but disbeliev- inp Ho 1auUhed and said:
 You are a child sistra. How can you endure to ride with my Cos,