Departures of note

When her husband was called up at the start of the Russo‑Japanese War, Haritina Korotkevich traveled to Port Arthur, disguised as a man and worked as a brakeman on the Trans‑Siberian Railway, crossing the Chinese Eastern Railway to Harbin and arriving at Dalian Bay where she met soldiers from her husband’s company and changed into women’s clothes.

Police threatened to return her to Harbin, but an officer sympathetic to her story helped her enlist; she took the oath of fidelity, donned a uniform, shouldered a rifle, and went to the front to be with her husband.