Lady Dorothie Mary Evelyn Feilding MM

[Terry_Reeves]

Lady Dorothie Feilding's MM was announced in the London Gazette on 1 Sept 1916. Not unexpectedly, the on-line LG does not appear to give a citation. Does anybody with a knowledge of Monro's Motor Ambulance, with which she served, know of the circumstances of her award?

The photograph below, was taken in a sadly overgrown cemetery at Monks Kirby, in Warwickshire, where a number of the Fielding family ( The Earls Of Denbigh) are interred. She was a distant relative of Henry Fielding, the author of "Tom Jones". Before anybody jumps on me for a spelling mistake, Henry Fielding changed the spelling of his surname! She married Charles Joseph Henry O'Hara Moore in 1917, presumably the reason why she left Monro's in that year.

Many thanks

Terry Reeves

[Terry_Reeves]

A big thank you to Sue Light who has e-mailed me with the answer to my question. From the British Journal of Nursing, 9th Sept 1916 supplied by Sue:

" Lady Dorothie Feilding is a member of the Monro Motor Ambulance, and has driven the Monro Motor Ambulance and attended the wounded for over a year with marked devotion to duty and contempt of danger. The Monro Corps is a Red Cross unit attached to the Belgian Field Army, and also works for the French."

Terry Reeves

[Sue Light]

Her entry in the Dictionary of National Biography ties up some of the loose ends

Sue

Moore [née Feilding], Lady Dorothy Mary Evelyn (1889-1935), ambulance driver, was born at Newnham Paddox, Warwickshire, on 6 October 1889, the second daughter of Rudolph Robert Basil Aloysius Augustine Feilding, ninth earl of Denbigh (1859–1939), a colonel in the Territorial Army, and his wife, Cecilia Mary Clifford (1860–1919). She was educated at home and at Assumption Convent, in Paris. She had six sisters, of whom Clare, Bettie, and Victoria also served in the First World War, and three brothers, Major Rudolph, Viscount Feilding, Coldstream Guards, who survived the war; Lieutenant-Commander the Hon. Hugh Feilding, Royal Navy, killed in action on 31 May 1916 at the battle of Jutland; and Captain the Hon. Henry Feilding, Coldstream Guards, who died on 9 October 1917 from wounds received in action in Flanders.

Lady Dorothy, who was a tall brunette, had a deep sense of patriotism and was determined to ‘do something’ in the war (Foster and Cluley, 1). At the earliest opportunity, in August 1914, she joined the Munro British Red Cross Motor Ambulance Corps (founded by Dr Hector Munro) and, after a short training course at Rugby Hospital, went to the front as an ambulance driver the following month. She served with the corps in Flanders until June 1917. This corps, comprising a convoy of motor ambulances, was officially attached to the allied armies; its work consisted of bringing wounded men from the firing lines to the casualty clearing hospitals.

Lady Dorothy's devotion to duty and her bravery were recognized at an early stage in the war. Admiral Ronarc'h, who commanded the French brigade of fusiliers marins in Flanders, published a special order of the day on 31 December 1914, thanking her for her work in removing wounded men in the neighbourhood of Ghent and Dixmude, ‘showing, almost every day, the finest example of devotion and of disregard for danger’ (Leslie, 7). A letter from the admiral accompanied this order, saying that all the men under his command would ever bear in remembrance ‘la gracieuse ambulancière’ who had so often risked her life in their relief.

Throughout her stay in Flanders Lady Dorothy wrote letters home, and some 250 of these survive. Most were addressed to her mother, with the exception of a few to her father. They were often written in a hurried scrawl but had an intimate and conversational style. Many aspects of her daily life were included in her writing. She gave eyewitness accounts of air raids and shelling, and descriptions of the perilous work of collecting casualties and driving them to hospital, often under fire. She told stories about her pet terrier, Charles, made rude remarks about the military censors, and commented on the beauty of the wild poppies and cornflowers that she saw growing near the battlefields. Her letters display her resilience and cheerfulness.

After the fall of Antwerp, Ghent had to be evacuated, and Lady Dorothy wrote angrily from Dunkirk, where all was chaos: ‘I have had to run the whole dam [sic] show’ (Foster and Cluley, 2). She describes Dr Munro as ‘losing his silly head and running round in circles’. Her chance encounter with an acquaintance, who was a relative of Baron de Broqueville, the Belgian war minister, changed the fortunes of the Munro ambulance corps and saved it from being sent back to England. The baron arranged for the setting up at Furnes of a field hospital that was to be fed by the Munro corps. Lady Dorothy was delighted at the outcome: ‘Ripping and I'm so glad we have a job’ (ibid.).

In one of her letters she admits how greatly affected she was by the scenes she witnessed: ‘It just despairs one and makes one rage when you see this endless stream of shattered humanity, and see the ghastly work a shell can make of their poor bodies’. Although she was a devout Roman Catholic her faith in an afterlife was destroyed by these experiences: ‘I think that there is an endless blank that begins after death and that all things finish there. I try to believe that there is a future, but I can't any more’ (Foster and Cluley, 6).

In September 1916 Lady Dorothy became the first Englishwoman to be awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the field. The award was notified in the London Gazette of 1 September 1916; she was decorated with the medal by George V at Windsor Castle on 6 September. She also received the bronze star in 1914, the French Croix de Guerre (bronze star), and was made a knight of the Belgian order of Leopold II.

Early in 1917 Lady Dorothy complained about the mud, the cold, and the gas attacks. ‘It's a dirty business gas and rather frightening—comes in great foggy waves and makes you cough your head off’ (Foster and Cluley, 7). She left the front in June 1917 and, on 5 July, married Captain Charles Moore MC (1880–1965), of the Irish Guards, from Mooresfort, co. Tipperary, at the church of the Sacred Heart, Newnham Paddox. In one of her last letters to her mother she expressed her thoughts about the previous three years: ‘Here right at the heart and pulse of things one finds realities and greatness’ (ibid.).

After the war Lady Dorothy and her husband, who had succeeded his father as second count of Rome, went to live at Mooresfort, where they ran the estate. They had four daughters and one son. Lady Dorothy died at Mooresfort on 24 October 1935.

[Sue Light]

Forgot the references to that:

R. Foster and C. Cluley, Warwickshire women: a guide to sources in the Warwickshire County Record Office (2000) · Warks. CRO, Feilding papers · J. H. Leslie, ed., An historical roll (with portraits) of those women of the British empire to whom the military medal has been awarded during the great war, 1914–18, pt 1 (Jan 1919) · b. cert. · m. cert. · Debrett's Peerage

[Terry_Reeves]

Sue

Very many thanks for the information.

Terry Reeves