Lady Dorothie Feilding at War ('Right at the Heart and Pulse of Things')

Lady Dorothie Mary Evelyn Feilding-Moore, MM was a British heiress who ignored her aristocratic background to become a highly decorated volunteer nurse and ambulance driver on the Western Front during the First World War. She was the first woman to be awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the field. She also received the Croix de Guerre and the Order of Leopold II from the Belgians. Christine Cluley has liaised with members of the surviving family and was able to access material beyond that available from the Feilding Archives at the Warwickshire Record Office. Her family have generously shared personal recollections and allowed her access to previously unpublished material. These vivid letters reveal Lady Dorothie in her own words, allowing the reader to share her thoughts and actions directly. We see how being part of a loving family in a secure, upper-class household prepared her for the challenges, dangers and deprivations of the First World War, and early in her marriage, the potentially dangerous years in Ireland during the 1920s. Lady Dorothie was a heroine, but this extended account of her life ensures that she is more than a plaster saint, that she is a fully rounded woman, by turns determined, courageous, amusing and acerbic. After two years in the hell of the Western Front, she went home to get married and after a very brief honeymoon, Lady D was back behind the wheel of an ambulance, ferrying the wounded around London.