Dorothy Lawrence (4 October 1896 – 29 August 1964) was an English journalist who posed as a male soldier to report from the front line during World War I.

However, trench life affected her health, and after ten days, she revealed her sex, afraid that if she needed medical attention her true identity would be discovered and those who helped her would be punished.

When her mother died in 1909, Lawrence was adopted by wealthy and respected church guardians Mrs Josephine Fitzgerald and her husband in Salisbury.

[1][6] Spending the night sleeping on a haystack in a forest,[1] she returned to Paris, where she concluded that only by disguising herself as a man could she get her story:[4][7] I'll see what an ordinary English girl, without credentials or money can accomplish.Lawrence persuaded two British Army soldiers she met in a Paris café to smuggle her a khaki uniform, piece by piece, within their washing; she called the ten men who eventually shared in this exploit her "khaki accomplices".

[4] She darkened her complexion with Condy’s Fluid, a disinfectant made from potassium permanganate; scraped the pale skin of her cheeks to produce a shaving rash; and added a tan using shoe polish.

[8][4] Wearing a blanket coat and no underwear so no one could discover her abandoned petticoats, she obtained forged identity papers as Private Denis Smith of the 1st Bn, Leicestershire Regiment and headed for the front lines.

[8] On her way towards Albert, Somme, she met Lancashire coalminer turned British Expeditionary Force (BEF) tunnel-digging sapper Tom Dunn, who offered to assist her.

[5] Fearing for the safety of a lone woman amongst female-companionship starved soldiers, Dunn found Lawrence an abandoned cottage in Senlis Forest to sleep in.

[1] Held within the Convent de Bon Pasteur, she was also made to swear not to write about her experiences and signed an affidavit to that effect to keep from being sent to jail.

[1][5] Sent back to London, she travelled across the English Channel on the same ferry as activist Emmeline Pankhurst, who asked her to speak at a suffragette meeting.

[8] Once in London, she tried to write about her experiences for The Wide World Magazine, but had to scrap her first book on the instructions of the War Office, which invoked the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act to silence her.

[4] She later commented:[11] In making that promise I sacrificed the chance of earning by newspaper articles written on this escapade, as a girl compelled to earn her livelihood.The National Archives have two medal index cards for Lawrence confirming her participation in the war: one showing her rank of Sapper with the Royal Engineers[12] and another showing her as a Worker in the Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps.

[1] On further investigation, East Sussex historian Raphael Stipic found a letter written during World War I by Sir Walter Kirke, head of the secret service for the British Expeditionary Force.

[4] Jones later found that Lawrence's rape allegations were included in her medical records, held in the London Metropolitan Archives of Saint Bernard's Hospital, but not available for general access.