Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / Sardarabad's Heroes: The Women of 1918
Transcript
- Lucas: When we talk about Sardarabad, the narrative usually centers on generals and infantry lines, but there's a whole other story running parallel to the guns — the women who made that victory possible. And I don't just mean in a supporting sense. Women were right there in the trenches, hauling ammunition, treating the wounded under fire, and in some cases, shooting back. Luna: I had no idea women were that involved in the actual combat. Lucas: It's one of those details that gets lost in the big battle narratives. There's a documented case of a woman named Zabel — we don't have her full name, just fragments — who was noted as a sniper during the Ottoman assault. She was reportedly a widow from a village near Etchmiadzin, and she joined the fedayee in the final days. According to one account, she accounted for several Ottoman officers before she was killed. Luna: That's incredible. How many other women like her were there? Lucas: That's the frustrating part — we don't have good numbers. The official records are sparse because the First Republic was scrambling just to survive, but anecdotal evidence from survivors suggests that hundreds of women served in various capacities, from combat to logistics. Some were fedayee widows, already radicalized by the genocide, and they saw this as a final stand for their people. Lucas: Not at all. One of the most crucial roles was ammunition carrying. The Armenian lines were under constant artillery fire, and the supply of cartridges and shells was running dangerously low. Women and girls, some as young as fourteen, formed human chains across the Ararat plain, running through open fields under Ottoman shelling to bring ammunition to the front. They wrapped the cartridges in their aprons or carried them in baskets on their heads. Luna: Running through artillery fire with baskets on their heads — that's almost unimaginable. Lucas: And they did it repeatedly, day after day. There's a memoir by a Russian observer who described one young woman who made three trips in a single afternoon, each time under heavy shelling, and simply said 'I must help my brothers.' It's that kind of determination that turned the tide. The Ottoman commanders had not anticipated that kind of resistance from a civilian population they considered defeated. Luna: So the women were effectively the logistical backbone of the whole battle. Lucas: Exactly. And it's not just combat roles. The nursing corps was almost entirely female, run by women who had trained with the Armenian Red Cross in the years before the war. They set up field hospitals in the monasteries around Etchmiadzin, and they worked around the clock with minimal supplies. One nurse, a woman named Vartouhi, kept a diary that survives: she writes about amputating limbs with a carpenter's saw because they had no surgical instruments. Luna: That's horrifying. And yet they kept going. Lucas: They knew what was at stake. The Ottoman aim was not just to defeat the Armenian army but to eradicate any possibility of an Armenian state. Every man, woman, and child understood that if Sardarabad fell, there would be no Armenia. So the women didn't see themselves as doing something extraordinary — they saw it as the only option. Luna: That puts the whole 'heroic last stand' narrative in a different light. It wasn't just soldiers — it was an entire people. Lucas: Absolutely. And interestingly, Aram Manukian's wife was deeply involved in organizing the civilian support network. She coordinated food supplies from the surrounding villages, making sure the troops had bread and water. There's a story that she personally led a convoy of oxcarts loaded with bread to the front lines, despite the risk of Ottoman patrols. Luna: So the leadership families were also putting their lives on the line. Lucas: They were. And that's what made the Armenian resistance so different from many other desperate defenses. The entire society mobilized. Women not only supported the battle — they were essential to its success. Without them, the lines would have run out of ammunition, the wounded would have died unattended, and the army would have collapsed from hunger. Lucas: And here's something that really brings it home: after the war, when the First Republic was established, many of these women simply went back to their villages and never spoke of what they did. Their contributions were not recorded in any official history. We only know about them through fragments — letters, diaries, and oral accounts collected decades later. Luna: So their story was almost lost entirely. Lucas: Pretty much. And that's part of why I wanted to talk about this. History tends to remember the commanders and the decisive charges, but the everyday courage of ordinary people — especially women — is often invisible. Sardarabad was won by farmers, priests, and grandmothers as much as by soldiers. Lucas: You know, it strikes me that this kind of storytelling — digging into the overlooked corners — is exactly why we do this show. It's a labor of love, and honestly, a couple of dollars a month from listeners is what keeps these episodes coming. If you've gotten something out of these conversations, especially the deep dives into the Caucasus, buying me a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo makes a real difference. It keeps the research going and the episodes ad-free. Luna: Yeah, it's really a small thing that adds up. And it helps us keep uncovering stories like these. Lucas: Exactly. So anyway — back to the women of Sardarabad. One of the most haunting images from the battle comes from a Russian journalist who watched a group of women dragging a field gun into position by hand, because the horses had been killed. He wrote that they were singing as they did it — a folk song about the Ararat valley. Luna: Singing while under fire. That takes a kind of defiance I can't even fathom. Lucas: It speaks to something deep in Armenian culture — a refusal to be erased. And those women weren't just fighting for territory: they were fighting for the right to sing that song in their own language, on their own land. When the Ottomans finally withdrew on May 29, 1918, it was in no small part because they could not break the spirit of a people who would drag cannons through the mud while singing. Luna: I'm glad we're putting their names back in the story, even if we don't have all of them. Lucas: That's the least we can do. And if you're ever in Armenia, there's a small monument near Sardarabad dedicated to the women of 1918 — a simple khachkar with an inscription that reads: 'To the mothers and sisters who gave us victory.' It's easy to miss, but it's there.