Major General Lionel Charles Dunsterville (9 November 1865 – 18 March 1946)[1] was a British Army officer, who led Dunsterforce across present-day Iraq and Iran towards the Caucasus and Baku during the First World War.

His mission set out from Baghdad in January 1918, aiming to gather information, to train and command local forces, and to prevent the spread of German propaganda.

Dunsterville was assigned to re-inforce the defence of the key oil-field and port of Baku (in present-day Azerbaijan), held from 26 July 1918 by the anti-Soviet Centro Caspian Dictatorship.

However, the British and their allies chose to abandon Baku on 14 September 1918 in the face of an onslaught by 14,000 Ottoman troops and Azerbaijani Generals like Ali-Agha Shikhlinski and Gaimmegam Hasan Bey, who took the city the next day.

Her second husband was Colditz escapee Damiaen Joan van Doorninck, whom she met in Switzerland during the Second World War as a Resistance worker.