Nurse EDITH CAVELL 1865-1915
Edith
Cavell was a British nurse serving in Belgium who was executed on a false
charge of assisting Allied prisoners to escape during World War One.
Born
on 4 December 1865 in Norfolk, Cavell entered the nursing profession while
aged 20, moving to Belgium in 1907. With the war in 1914 and the
subsequent German occupation of Belgium, Cavell joined the Red Cross and
began caring for wounded soldiers of all nationalities. Many
of the captured Allied soldiers who were treated subsequently succeeded in
escaping to neutral Holland. Cavell was arrested on 5 August 1915 by local
German authorities and charged with having personally aided in the escape
of some 200 such soldiers.
Kept in solitary confinement for nine
weeks the Germans successfully extracted a sham confession from
Cavell which formed the basis of her trial. She, along with a
named Belgian accomplice Philippe Baucq, were duly pronounced
guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad. The
sentence was carried out on 12 October 1915 and Cavell's case
received significant sympathetic worldwide press coverage, most
notably in Britain and the then-neutral U.S.
EDITH CAVELL
by LAURENCE BINYON
She was binding the wounds of her enemies
when they came -
The lint in her hand unrolled,
They battered the door with their rifle-butts, crashed it in:
She faced them gentle and bold.
They haled her before the judges where
they sat
In their places, helmet on head.
With question and menace the judges assailed her, "Yes,
I have broken your law," she said.
"I have tended the hurt and hidden
the hunted, have done
As a sister does to a brother,
Because of a law that is greater than that you have made,
Because I could do none other.
"Deal as you will with me. This is
my choice to the end,
To live in the life I vowed."
"She is self-confessed," they cried; "she is
self-condemned.
She shall die, that the rest may be cowed."
In the terrible hour of the dawn, when
the veins are cold,
They led her forth to the wall.
"I have loved my land," she said, "but it is not enough:
Love requires of me all.
"I will empty my heart of the
bitterness, hating none."
And sweetness filled her brave
With a vision of understanding beyond the hour
That knelled to the waiting grave.
They bound her eyes, but she stood as if
she shone.
The rifles it was that shook
When the hoarse command rang out. They could not endure
That last, that defenceless look.
And the officer strode and pistolled her
surely, ashamed
That men, seasoned in blood,
Should quail at a woman, only a woman,—
As a flower stamped in the mud.
And now that the deed was securely done,
in the night
When none had known her fate,
They answered those that had striven for her, day by day:
"It is over, you come too late."
And with many words and sorrowful-phrased
excuse
Argued their German right
To kill, most legally; hard though the duty be,
The law must assert its might.
Only a woman! yet she had pity on them,
The victim offered slain
To the gods of fear that they worship. Leave them there,
Red hands, to clutch their gain!
She bewailed not herself, and we will
bewail her not,
But with tears of pride rejoice
That an English soul was found so crystal-clear
To be triumphant voice.
Of the human heart that dares adventure
all
But live to itself untrue,
And beyond all laws sees love as the light in the night,
As the star it must answer to.
The hurts she healed, the thousands
comforted—these
Make a fragrance of her fame.
But because she stept to her star right on through death
It is Victory speaks her name.
Laurence Binyon
For further
information about the life of Nurse Edith Cavell
visit www.edithcavell.org.uk