Born: 4 October 1896, United Kingdom
Died: 29 August 1964
Country most active: France, United Kingdom
Also known as: Denis Smith
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
During the First World War, Englishwoman Dorothy Lawrence aspired to be an investigative journalist and she contacted several British newspapers offering to work as a war correspondent in France. All of the editors refused to hire her believing that the work was too dangerous for a woman. Undeterred, Lawrence disguised herself as a man, and using the alias Denis Smith, joined the British Army. For ten days, she worked in the trenches on the Western Front and laid mines in no man’s land under fire from shrapnel and shells. Dorothy began experiencing fainting fits so she turned herself in and revealed her identity. Authorities were first suspicious that she was a spy and detained her in a French convent. Before she was released, she was forced to swear an affidavit promising not to tell the public how she fooled the British military. That did not stop Lawrence from publishing an account of her experiences in her memoir in 1919.