A Story Poem About Dorothy Lawrence

    Hey everybody, I hope you're having a good Monday! I wrote this poem a couple weeks ago and I think it turned out pretty well and I even managed to use a specific rhyme scheme through all six stanzas.  I hope you like it!  Stick around to at the end to read a summary of Dorothy Lawrence's life.  

Sick and heavy, the day began, 

With noise and bombs and fear 

And for some reason, I wonder again, why I am here 

Charles is next to me, who’s just a young man 

No one deserves this, far or near 

I write in my logbook, turning away I can’t show my tears 

For I too, only, supposedly am a young man.

But I’m not, 

I’m a woman who's broken the law, 

But the aching in my head is like a claw 

That’s tearing me apart so I squat 

And squeeze my eyes shut, and gnaw

My lip, and draw 

My will and mind to a place of peace till my body is not so hot.  

It is too easy, in this place 

To imagine that the world is ending 

Here, with fire, smoke, death, pain, and an ascending 

Array of sparks up to space 

And with many contending 

Types of pain, to the point of feeling as though they're rending 

My body in two, though that is not the case

Devastated, I have found 

How I am truly very weak 

When I last only ten bleak 

Days in the trenches, my body pressed to the ground 

Unable to be one to sneak 

And survive.  And afterward, I am forbidden to speak 

About what happened there, they hardly allow me to utter a sound

But I wasn’t told how to survive,

I wasn’t trained, 

Not many are in a bloodstained 

World made for men, still, I’m alive 

And I’m no longer chained 

Or told what I can and can not say, and we’ve gained 

Much truth since my days in the war, so dive 

Into my story, learn all you can, I’m alright now, I’m no longer pained. 

So as much as you are able, 

Learn all you can know about 

The women throughout 

History who were labeled as, “unstable.”  

Women have changed our world in countless unseen ways, so flout 

The idea that a woman is one to doubt.  

Thank you for reading!

Here's more on Dorothy Lawrence's life if you're interested.

In a world built for and by men Dorothy Lawrence decided she didn't care and she would do as she pleased. Without training or instruction, just a bit of trickery, Dorothy made it to the front lines of WW1 for ten days.  But every accomplished woman in history, it seems, needed to use a bit of trickery and I certainly don't blame her for it. 

Dorothy was born on October 4th in Hendon, Middlesex, at a place just northwest of London, to most likely illegitimate parents.  She strove to be a journalist and ended up getting a couple of articles published.  When the war started in 1914 she offered her services to be a war correspondent but no paper would send her to the front lines.  What she thought of as the best way to get recognized quickly in the journalism world, was soon denied.  She attempted a couple of other ways, like joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment in France, and was even arrested 2 miles away from the front, for attempting to walk there from an open area in France.  

She realized that they would never allow her to get to the front because of one reason only: she was a woman.  So she decided to take a different approach.  The first step was what she called her khaki accomplices, two British soldiers in a Paris cafe that she persuaded to smuggle her a uniform piece by piece.  Once that was obtained she set about looking like a man, bulking herself out in places with cotton wool and flattening herself out in other places.  She tanned herself with shoe polish and persuaded other soldiers to cut her hair.  With that done all she had to do was forge identity papers,  and while we don’t know exactly how she did it, it most likely involved her persuading a couple more people.  That’s how Dorothy Lawrence, an English girl with no money, became private Dennis Smith, ready for the front lines.  

She started on a bicycle, heading to Albert in northern France, and she met Tom Dunn who worked as a Sapper, a combat soldier who performs a number of engineering duties.  Nervous for her safety if, or when, the other men figured out she was a woman, he offered to help her and acquired a rundown, abandoned cottage, where she slept on a soggy mattress each night and ate any rations Dunn and his friends could spare.  He helped her more by finding her work as a sapper digging tunnels 400 yards from the front.  While that’s what she wrote in her journal, evidence shows that she wasn’t digging tunnels under the front line but working in trenches. 

In order to protect Tom Dunn and the other men who helped her, after ten days she turned herself in and was put under military arrest, however during those ten days she developed constant chills and rheumatism, and then fainting fits.  She was forced to reveal herself or her developed sickness would do it for her.  

She was taken multiple places to be interrogated by around 6 generals and over 20 officers.  The army was nervous that other women would attempt something like this and were embarrassed that one was able to breach security in the way she did.   And this is where the censorship began.  They told her not to publish anything about her time or experience on the front or she would be sent to jail.  She tried to publish articles in magazines as well as a book but the majority of the content was denied by the army.  Later in life, in 1919, she finally did publish a book titled Sapper Dorothy Lawrence: The First Female Soldier, but it was not a success probably because it was still highly censored.  

Towards the end of her life, her story grows increasingly sad as she was deemed insane and put in an institution with no family, friends, or visitors.  We now know that insane asylums during that time were not something that could help in the slightest but rather hurt even more.  

Her story resurfaced in 2003 when one of the grandsons of the men who helped her in the war found what she wrote and the digging began to rediscover the uncensored version of her story.

This is a story that essentially begins with a strong, determined woman trying something no woman has tried before.  It’s the type of story that should end well, a woman with everything against her in life overcoming such things, however that’s not what happens. It ends quite terribly.  This isn't a fictional story, after all, it’s history and I suppose it just adds to the idea that history can be quite sad. 

 

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