Edith Cavell and Personal Sacrifice

October 12, 2015, marked the 100th anniversary of British nurse Edith Cavell’s execution by a German firing squad fifteen months after the start of World War I.

Hailed as a saintly British nurse-martyr by some and called a victim of the British propaganda machine by others, Cavell’s life and the reason for her death was more nuanced than that.

Many people know the basic story. Or do they?

Edith Cavell traveled to Belgium at the start of WWI, not because of her desire to support the British government but because she had been living there for seven years and had set up the nurses training school in Brussels. Belgium considers her the “Florence Nightingale of Belgium.”

Cavell (rhymes with travel) just happened to be visiting family in Norfolk when war broke out.

She returned to her hospital, which was taken over by the Red Cross, and there she oversaw the treatment of all wounded, civilians or military from either army. Nurse Cavell often prayed with her patients.

She did not go to Belgium as a spy.

The German Army invaded Belgium–it was a stopping ground on their way to France, they didn’t necessarily want to acquire the Lowlands. They aimed to reach Paris quickly by going wide to the west and capturing it from an unexpected corner. The Schlieffen plan had been devised in 1905 and many in the German military felt it was the only way they could win a war against France.

Unfortunately for the German Army, the Belgiums didn’t roll over as quickly as anticipated.

Under orders from their king, the Belgiums broke the dikes holding back the sea and flooded their low-lying farmland. The flooding bogged down the German advance and, ultimately, though it wasn’t known for four and a half more years, destroyed the German chances of winning the war.

The daughter of a Church of England vicar, Cavell was raised in the church and a devout Christian. A woman of strong constitution and conviction, she also had worked and trained nurses in France.

When two British soldiers were brought to her in November 2014, she helped get them smuggled into the neutral Netherlands.

The first time Cavell assisted, she sealed her fate with the Germans.

Over the next year, Cavell assisted 60 British and 15 French soldiers to escape, hiding many in her home on their way to the border. She also aided 100 French and Belgium civilians.

Helping enemy combatants across the border was punishable by death in the German army. When, after a lengthy investigation, Cavell was arrested, she signed a statement admitting all.

The British government couldn’t help her, but the Americans tried. They pointed out to the German army that the American public did not hold the Germans in high favor, particularly after the sinking of innocent civilians on the Lusitania.

The American ambassador warned that executing a 49-year-old British nurse would only make matters worse.

The German high command paid no attention. Instead of processing Cavell’s “crime” using the First Geneva Convention rules that would have exonerated her, the Germans used German law which held aiding a combatant punishable by death.

She was not tried for espionage, but treason against the German state.

Of the 27 people who assisted her, five were sentenced to death but ultimately only Cavell and one other were executed. The others served their time in hard labor or were reprieved.

Cavell accepted her sentence.

Held for ten weeks, she was kept in solitary confinement for the final fortnight as she awaited her punishment. Cavell spent that time in prayer and contemplating Thomas a Kempis’ The Life of Christ.

The night before her execution, she cleared her soul with the Anglican chaplain, Reverend Stirling Gahan, whom the Germans allowed to visit and provide Holy Communion. It is from that meeting that her famous quote survives, an apt one for a follower of Christ:

“I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me…life has always been hurried and full of difficulty. This time of rest has been a great mercy…This I would say, standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.”

Prior to her execution, the Army allowed a German Lutheran prison chaplain to sit with her. He passed on a message to her family:

 “Ask Father Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.”

Did she really die for her country?

Yes, in the sense she was executed for enabling soldiers to escape capture and punishment by the German army.

But I suspect her willingness to go to her death had more to do with her peace as a believer in the resurrection. She had cared for those who were suffering–even if it meant risking her life by helping them to freedom.

As for the German army, Cavell needed to die for German propaganda purposes. They used her execution to discourage others from helping soldiers escape.

As explained by the German Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs :

“It was a pity that Miss Cavell had to be executed, but it was necessary. She was judged justly…It is undoubtedly a terrible thing that the woman has been executed; but consider what would happen to a State, particularly in war, if it left crimes aimed at the safety of its armies to go unpunished because committed by women.”

The Germans feared to not execute Cavell would result in far more women joining the fight and “getting away with” spying because they were women.

Unfortunately for the German army, the British government controlled the cable lines to the rest of the western world.

They turned Cavell’s death into an indictment of the inhumanity of the German army–which ultimately backfired on the Germans, particularly in places like the neutral United States.

A century later?

100 years later, Edith Cavell is remembered for her patriotism and unflinching courage before the German army when faced with death.

I believe she may, instead, be more readily linked to a favorite Bible verse. “Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend.”

She was a nurse and a Christian.

There really wasn’t another choice.

Her body was returned after the end of WWI to a great ceremony which can be viewed here.

You can read in greater depth about Edith Cavell at a website dedicated to her honor, here.

For more on Edith Cavell’s life, consider the Women Worth Knowing podcast episode.

And here is a headstone in her memory at Cavell Gardens in Inverness, Scotland.

Tweetables

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Patriotism or Christian duty? Edith Cavell’s execution. Click to Tweet