WWI: Dorothea Moore
Mar. 19th, 2025 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraWanted, An English Girl: The Adventures of an English Schoolgirl in Germany, Dorothea Moore. Moore was in the VAD in WWI and her brother Edmund was in the medical corps; this book is dedicated to him. It was published in 1916 and has a “ripped from the headlines” quality to it, and it’s also the first vintage girls’ school (technically - there isn’t any of it set at school) story I’ve read that needs a content warning for sexual violence and torture. It’s available as an ebook from Books to Treasure.
It revolves around Gillian, the schoolgirl of the title, who gets a job as a holiday companion to Berta, a German girl in Insterburg who wants to learn English. Gillian arrives as the German forces are pressuring Insterburg’s Grand Duchess (young, beautiful) into accepting their offers of protection/marriage etc and is quickly drawn into the politics and preparations for war, with a few English men popping up every so often to be gallant and challenge the inferior sneaky German officers. Berta is a bunch of clichés (lazy, selfish, greedy) and her parents are obviously evil, Gillian overhears dangerous threats, and things gallop along quickly to a chapter entitled “Friendly Occupation” in which the German troops move into the city.
Gillian takes shelter with a family she knows; soldiers force their way into the house, demanding alcohol, and Gillian and Tienette, the teenage daughter of the family, give them a cask of wine and barricade themselves with the younger children in one of the bedrooms while the increasingly drunken soldiers start smashing everything outside. It’s genuinely scary, and then it gets worse - the officer (Prussian) turns up, tells off his soldiers, and then sees Tiennette and starts molesting her (“His cruel sensual face was closet to Tienette’s white, terrified one.”), keeping her in the bedroom while one of his men drags Gillian off by her hair. Gillian tells one of the younger kids to go for help; he brings back Bèrnard, Tienette’s fiancé, who punches the officer, accidentally kills him, and is then marched off to the Palace and executed by firing squad in the Square despite Gillian’s pleas.
The Germans continue to be awful, taking over the Palace, banishing staff loyal to the Duchess, and the Prussian Prince Waldemar is determined to marry her (he also gets drunk and tries to “kiss” her; Gillian distracts him). Eventually Gillian and the Duchess escape and head for the British lines; we get a number of descriptions of German atrocities, either from witnesses or the Germans themselves (“[W]hat as it you did to those little Belgian fools at the farm? They squealed enough.”) and, at the climax of the book, Gillian and the Duchess take an underground passage to a town they think is in English hands - but it’s been retaken by the Germans, and when they come out, it’s in a cellar where a mortally wounded priest is praying over the bodies of a mother and her newborn baby. The baby is nailed to the wall and the mother was forced to watch while being crushed under logs.
Most of the books I’ve read in this era go on about the atrocities committed by German troops in Belgium, and it’s presented over and over again as a reason for fighting (far more than the invasion itself). The Bryce Report, which looked into these allegations, was published in May 1915, and I am pretty sure Moore was using it as a reference. There is discussion about its accuracy, particularly some of the more lurid stories, but much of it seems supported by events; regardless, it was highly effective as propaganda (the Germans published a retaliatory report about all the horrible things Belgian civilians did to German soldiers and how justified their invasion was, but this appears to be far less based in reality). I was startled by how much violence Moore put in her book, but all these things would have been the topic of daily conversations and in the newspapers.
regshoe has recommended Moore's Head of the Lower School for more German spies - it's published after WWI but obviously evil does not rest. It's on Gutenberg so I will check it out.
It revolves around Gillian, the schoolgirl of the title, who gets a job as a holiday companion to Berta, a German girl in Insterburg who wants to learn English. Gillian arrives as the German forces are pressuring Insterburg’s Grand Duchess (young, beautiful) into accepting their offers of protection/marriage etc and is quickly drawn into the politics and preparations for war, with a few English men popping up every so often to be gallant and challenge the inferior sneaky German officers. Berta is a bunch of clichés (lazy, selfish, greedy) and her parents are obviously evil, Gillian overhears dangerous threats, and things gallop along quickly to a chapter entitled “Friendly Occupation” in which the German troops move into the city.
Gillian takes shelter with a family she knows; soldiers force their way into the house, demanding alcohol, and Gillian and Tienette, the teenage daughter of the family, give them a cask of wine and barricade themselves with the younger children in one of the bedrooms while the increasingly drunken soldiers start smashing everything outside. It’s genuinely scary, and then it gets worse - the officer (Prussian) turns up, tells off his soldiers, and then sees Tiennette and starts molesting her (“His cruel sensual face was closet to Tienette’s white, terrified one.”), keeping her in the bedroom while one of his men drags Gillian off by her hair. Gillian tells one of the younger kids to go for help; he brings back Bèrnard, Tienette’s fiancé, who punches the officer, accidentally kills him, and is then marched off to the Palace and executed by firing squad in the Square despite Gillian’s pleas.
The Germans continue to be awful, taking over the Palace, banishing staff loyal to the Duchess, and the Prussian Prince Waldemar is determined to marry her (he also gets drunk and tries to “kiss” her; Gillian distracts him). Eventually Gillian and the Duchess escape and head for the British lines; we get a number of descriptions of German atrocities, either from witnesses or the Germans themselves (“[W]hat as it you did to those little Belgian fools at the farm? They squealed enough.”) and, at the climax of the book, Gillian and the Duchess take an underground passage to a town they think is in English hands - but it’s been retaken by the Germans, and when they come out, it’s in a cellar where a mortally wounded priest is praying over the bodies of a mother and her newborn baby. The baby is nailed to the wall and the mother was forced to watch while being crushed under logs.
Most of the books I’ve read in this era go on about the atrocities committed by German troops in Belgium, and it’s presented over and over again as a reason for fighting (far more than the invasion itself). The Bryce Report, which looked into these allegations, was published in May 1915, and I am pretty sure Moore was using it as a reference. There is discussion about its accuracy, particularly some of the more lurid stories, but much of it seems supported by events; regardless, it was highly effective as propaganda (the Germans published a retaliatory report about all the horrible things Belgian civilians did to German soldiers and how justified their invasion was, but this appears to be far less based in reality). I was startled by how much violence Moore put in her book, but all these things would have been the topic of daily conversations and in the newspapers.
regshoe has recommended Moore's Head of the Lower School for more German spies - it's published after WWI but obviously evil does not rest. It's on Gutenberg so I will check it out.
