Dorothy Lawrence (26 January 1888 - 29 August 1964) was an English journalist who posed as a male soldier to report from the front line during World War I. In 1915, she went to France, where she managed to obtain a military uniform and a false identity.

Upon her arrival in Albert, Somme, she found a soldier - Royal Engineers Sapper Tommy Dunn - who took her to the front lines. 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. She was arrested and interrogated, suspected of being a spy or a Camp follower (prostitute). She was then sent home under a strict agreement not to write about her experiences.

After the war, Lawrence published a memoir, but it was highly censored and not very successful. Her health began to fail, and she was committed to a mental institution, where she died 40 years later. In 2003, her story was rediscovered. Her book was reprinted and the Imperial War Museum included her experiences in an exhibition on women at war. Since 2015, several plays and films have been produced based on her story.

Lawrence was born in Fulham, Middlesex. When her mother died on 1 July 1901, Lawrence was adopted by a wealthy and respected Church of England guardian, widowed Mrs Josephine Fitzgerald in Salisbury.

By outbreak of World War One Lawrence had had some articles published in The Times and in Nash's Pall Mall Magazine. She wrote to a number of the Fleet Street newspapers offering her services as a war correspondent. She believed that this would be the best way to gain recognition for her writing skills, but no British newspapers would send a woman to the front lines Western Front (World War One) In fact, they couldn't get access for even experienced male correspondents.

In summer 1915, according to her later book, she purchased a bicycle for £2 and paid another £3 to convey it with her across the English Channel to France. She was rejected from joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment and instead attempted to enter the war zone via the French sector as a freelancer. She was arrested by French Police in Senlis, 2 miles (3.2 km) short of the front line, and ordered to leave. Spending the night sleeping on a haystack in a forest, she returned to Paris, concluding that only by disguising herself as a man would she get her story:

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 from their own laundry. She later dubbed the ten men who eventually shared in this exploit her "khaki accomplices". She then practised transforming herself into a male soldier by flattening her figure with a home-made corset, using sacking and cotton-wool to bulk out her shoulders and persuading two Scottish military policemen to cut her hair in a short military style. 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. Then she asked her soldier friends to teach her how to drill and march.