A handwritten note from Walter Kirke , head of the secret services of the British Expeditionary Force (British Expeditionary Force) during the First World War, aroused the curiosity of the English historian Raphael Stipic …
[…] a young woman dressed as a man and headed to the front line hoping to become a war correspondent.
It was the story of Dorothy Lawrence , the only female soldier in the British Army.
Dorothy Lawrence
Little is known about Dorothy's childhood, we have to move to 1914 where we find a 19-year-old girl trying to make her way as a journalist in a world monopolized by men. With the outbreak of the war she volunteered to travel to the continent and cover the war as a correspondent, but neither the newspaper editors nor the War Office would allow her. So, she decided to travel to France on her own and join the British Expeditionary Force there. She managed to cross the English Channel and began her adventure on French soil. In a small Parisian cafe she contacted two British soldiers to whom she told her story and her desire to reach the front. Although they tried to convince her of the impossibility of carrying out her plan, her determination got the better of her and they decided to help her. But as a woman it was impossible... they cut her hair, blackened her pale face, dressed her in military clothes - wrapping cloth around her breasts - and got her fake papers under the name Denis Smith . On the way to the front, she met her future guardian angel, Tom Dunn , a former miner enlisted in the company of sappers. He set her up in a cabin near the company camp, where she hid for several days until Tom managed to blend her in with the rest of the sappers. She was on the front line laying mines 350 meters from enemy lines, in no man's land, and withstanding German bombing for 10 days. The days she had been holed up in the hut with hardly any food-what Tom could share with her-the cold, the damp, and later the grueling work in the trenches had taken their toll. She fainted and was about to be taken to the field hospital where her deception would have been uncovered. Her exhaustion and, above all, her concern did not let him sleep that night. She knew that if she was found out everyone who had helped her would be court-martialed. So the next morning she decided to report to the duty sergeant and reveal her true identity. The sergeant arrested her and brought it to the attention of her superiors. She Dorothy was subjected to a rigorous interrogation thinking that she could be a spy but from her lips only her story came out of her-she at no time revealed the name of those who had helped her-. They did not know what to do with her and decided to place her in her convent until they could repatriate her. When the day came back home, she made him sign a document in which she swore not to reveal how she had managed to infiltrate the lines; otherwise, she would be sentenced to prison.
Already in London, and even having a story to tell that she would have given her success and fame as a journalist, she had to make a living in other things. After the war, she thought that she was already released from her oath and published a book with her story “ Sapper Dorothy Lawrence:the only English woman soldier ”. The War Office did not think so and censored her book. In 1925, and after denouncing a rape, she was admitted to her psychiatric hospital. Nothing else is known about her from this date, only that she passed away in 1964.
You can find more stories like Dorothy Lawrence's in this book of amazing stories from World War I and World War II.