Edith Cavell

by Diana Souhami

  Antoine Depage’s strategy with mass casualties, extreme injuries and endemic infection, was to treat mortal complications immediately and to keep lesser wounds covered and free from infection until the men could be taken to other hospitals. He thought all war wounds should be viewed as infected, and he used a surgical technique called debridement of cutting away infected and mangled tissue. He would resect the whole area of the wound and not suture it if any bacteria were present: “The wide debridement of the wound, with resection of contused tissue and removal of particles of clothing and other foreign bodies, must be considered a strict rule …” His radical methods, though hugely scarring, at a time when there were no antibiotics saved many wounded men from fatal infection.

  27

  CHRISTMAS 1914

  Christmas Day 1914 in Belgium, France and England was clear, frosty and sunny. The cold hardened the mud in the trenches and made existence more tolerable. In different places along the Western Front a spontaneous truce occurred. In the morning, soldiers put their heads above the trenches and called out “Merry Christmas” across the barbed wire in their enemy’s language. They crawled out to greet each other, met in no man’s land, shook hands, exchanged souvenirs, smoked and drank together and played soccer. Many soldiers wrote home about it in wonder. Captain Edward Westrow Hulse sent one such letter to his mother. He had been educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, and was with the Scots Guards:

  Flanders 28/12/14

  My dearest mother,

  Just returned to billets again, after the most extraordinary Christmas in the trenches you could possibly imagine. Words fail me completely in trying to describe it, but here goes!

  On the 23rd we took over the trenches in the ordinary manner, relieving the Grenadiers, and during the 24th the usual firing took place, and sniping was pretty brisk. We stood to arms as usual at 6:30 a.m. on the 25th, and I noticed that there was not much shooting; this gradually died down and by 8 a.m. there was no shooting at all except for a few shots on our left. At 8:30 a.m. I was looking out, and saw four Germans leave their trenches and come towards us; I told two of my men to go and meet them unarmed (as the Germans were unarmed) and to see that they did not pass the half-way line. We were 350–400 yards apart at this point. My fellows were not very keen, not knowing what was up, so I went out alone, and met Barry, one of our ensigns, also coming out from another part of the line. By the time we got to them they were three quarters of the way over, and much too near our barbed wire, so I moved them back. They were three private soldiers and a stretcher-bearer and their spokesman started off by saying that he thought it only right to come over and wish us a happy Christmas, and trusted us implicitly to keep the truce …

  We then entered on a long discussion on every sort of thing. I was dressed in an old stocking-cap and a man’s overcoat, and they took me for a corporal, a thing which I did not discourage, as I had an eye to going as near their lines as possible … I asked them what orders they had from their officers as to coming over to us, and they said none; they had just come over out of goodwill.

  They protested that they had no feeling of enmity towards us at all, but that everything lay with their authorities, and that being soldiers they had to obey. I believe that they were speaking the truth when they said this, and that they never wished to fire a shot again. They said that unless directly ordered, they were not going to shoot again until we did … We talked about the ghastly wounds made by rifle bullets, and we both agreed that neither of us used dum-dum bullets, and that the wounds are solely inflicted by the high velocity bullet with the sharp nose, at short range. We both agreed that it would be far better if we used the old South African round-nosed bullet, which makes a clean hole …

  They think that our Press is to blame in working up feeling against them by publishing false “atrocity reports.” I told them of various sweet little cases which I have seen for myself, and they told me of English prisoners whom they have seen with soft-nosed bullets, and lead bullets with notches cut in the nose; we had a heated, and at the same time good-natured argument, and ended by hinting to each other that the other was lying!

  I kept it up for half an hour, and then escorted them back as far as their barbed wire, having a jolly good look round all the time, and picking up various little bits of information which I had not had an opportunity of doing under fire! I left instructions with them that if any of them came out later they must not come over the half-way line, and appointed a ditch as the meeting place. We parted after an exchange of Albany cigarettes and German cigars and I went straight to H-qrs to report.

  On my return at 10 a.m. I was surprised to hear a hell of a din going on, and not a single man left in my trenches; they were completely denuded (against my orders) and nothing lived! I heard strains of “Tipperary” floating down the breeze, swiftly followed by a tremendous burst of “Deutschland Über Alles” and as I got to my own Coy H-qrs dug-out, I saw to my amazement not only a crowd of about 150 British and Germans at the halfway house which I had appointed opposite my lines, but six or seven such crowds, all the way down our lines, extending towards the 8th Division on our right. I bustled out and asked if there were any German officers in my crowd, and the noise died down (as this time I was myself in my own cap and badges of rank).

  I found two, but had to talk to them through an interpreter, as they could neither talk English nor French … I explained to them that strict orders must be maintained as to meeting halfway and everyone unarmed; and we both agreed not to fire until the other did, thereby creating a complete deadlock and armistice (if strictly observed).

  Meanwhile Scots and Huns were fraternising in the most genuine possible manner. Every sort of souvenir was exchanged, addresses given and received, photos of families shown, etc. One of our fellows offered a German a cigarette; the German said, “Virginian?” Our fellow said “Aye, straight-cut,” the German said “No thanks, I only smoke Turkish!” (sort of 10/- a 100!) It gave us all a good laugh.

  A German NCO with the Iron Cross—gained he told me for conspicuous skill in sniping—started his fellows off on some marching tune. When they had done I set the note for “The Boys of Bonnie Scotland, Where the heather and the bluebells grow,” and so we went on, singing everything from “Good King Wenceslas” down to the ordinary Tommies’ song, and ended up with “Auld Lang Syne,” which we all, English, Scots, Irish, Prussian, Wurtembergers, etc., joined in. It was absolutely astounding, and if I had seen it on a cinematograph film, I should have sworn that it was faked! …

  From foul rain and wet, the weather had cleared up the night before to a sharp frost, and it was a perfect day, everything white, and the silence seemed extraordinary after the usual din. From all sides birds seemed to arrive, and we hardly ever see a bird generally. Later in the day I fed about 50 sparrows outside my dug-out which shows how complete the silence and quiet was.

  I must say that I was very much impressed with the whole scene, and also, as everyone else, astoundingly relieved by the quiet and by being able to walk about freely. It is the first time, day or night, that we have heard no guns, or rifle-firing, since I left Havre …

  Just after we had finished “Auld Lang Syne” an old hare started up and seeing so many of us about in an unwonted spot did not know which way to go. I gave one loud “View Holloa” and one and all, British and Germans, rushed about giving chase, slipping up on the frozen plough, falling about, and after a hot two minutes we killed in the open, a German and one of our fellows falling together heavily upon the completely baffled hare. Shortly afterwards we saw four more hares, and killed one again; both were good heavy weight and had evidently been out between the two rows of trenches for the last two months, well-fed on the cabbage patches many of which are untouched on the “no-man’s land.” The enemy kept one and we kept the other …

  During the afternoon another coursing meeting took place, with no result and at 4:30 p.m. we agreed to keep in our respective trenches and told them the truce was ended �
��

  Ten weeks later Captain Edward Hamilton Westrow Hulse was killed, aged twenty-five.

  Along the Western Front British and German front line soldiers, officers and men, sang carols together, took photographs, arranged joint burials of the dead. It was the only unofficial truce of the war. By the following Christmas orders had been given to both sides prohibiting any repeat of it.

  These were young men who obeyed orders, who wanted to be heroic, who felt no enmity toward those on whom they inflicted mortal violence. They killed in response to a higher command. Christmas was a day to go beyond military orders to the idea of peace and goodwill to all men. Adolf Hitler, a corporal in the trenches at Ypres, disapproved of this truce: “There should be no question of something like that during war,” he said. For him, there was no higher law than martial law.

  At Christmas Edith Cavell moved her desk to her sitting room and turned her office into a recreation room for the nurses. “I have a beautiful bunch of chrysanthemums on my table,” she wrote to her mother, “nearly as big as soup plates and a curious vase which is an unexploded but empty shell that I shall bring for you to see one day.”

  She gave an all-day party to which thirty very poor children came, refugees from the villages and towns. Toys, chocolate and candy had been sent by ship from America. For dinner there was roast beef and plum pudding, “from your receipt,” Edith Cavell told her mother. There was a decorated tree and for each child presents of a bundle of clothes, and a doll for the girls, a toy car or train for the boys. Sister Wilkins had a sore finger from so much sewing of dolls and clothes. For tea there were currant buns, jam tarts, and milky coffee. All the Belgian nurses allied to the School came. Many had relatives who were wounded or fighting. Grace Jemmett spent Christmas with her American friends nearby. “She is still in very poor health and spends a great deal of time in bed,” Edith Cavell told her mother. But Pauline was at the party and José the Rumanian house manager, and Marie, Edith Cavell’s German maid, and the cleaners and the cook. The Reverend Stirling Gahan arrived late in the afternoon. He was by then the only English clergyman remaining in Brussels. His wife Muriel was ill, so Edith Cavell sent her present round to their house—a tea service. He was surprised to find half a dozen British soldiers milling among the guests. These soldiers had had their Christmas dinner down in the cellar before coming up to join in the party. Two of them, Sergeant Jesse Tunmore and Private Lewis, had arrived two days previously. The Reverend Gahan thought there was a “spice of danger” about their presence, but it did not occur to him that Edith Cavell might be at special risk.

  But there was more than a spice of danger in the work she was doing. All involved in resistance were at risk and Christmas was a single day. The Archbishop of Malines, Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium—a Walloon, educated at Louvain—for his Christmas sermon distributed an account of the occupation to be read in churches. The priests who did so were arrested. “I realise perhaps better than anyone what our poor country has suffered,” the Cardinal wrote:

  and no Belgian should doubt that my citizen’s and cardinal’s soul has been tortured by all these afflictions. The last four months have seemed like a century.

  In their thousands our brave ones have been slaughtered; wives and mothers weep for the husbands and sons they will never see again; homes are broken; misery spreads and anguish is poignant. At Malines, at Antwerp, I have watched the population of two large cities be subjected, one for six hours and the other for thirty-four, to a continuous bombardment and to have been in the throes of death. I have visited the most devastated regions of my diocese—Duffel, Lierre, Berlaer, St. Rombaut, Konings-Hoyckt, Mortsel, Waelhem, Muysen, Wavre-Ste-Catherine, Wavre-Notre-Dame, Sempst, Weerde, Eppeghem, Hofstade, Elewyt, Rymenam, Boortmeerbeek, Wespelaer, Haacht, Werchter-Wackerzeel, Rotselaer, Tremeloo, Louvain, Blauwput, Kessel-Loo, Boven-Loo, Linden, Herent, Thildonck, Bueken, Relst, Aerschot, Wesemael, Hersselst, Diest, Schaffen, Moenstede, Rillaer, Gelrode—and what I have seen of ruins and ashes exceeds anything I could have imagined … Churches, schools, asylums, hospitals, convents are almost entirely destroyed or in ruins. Entire villages have practically disappeared. At Werchter-Wackerzeel for instance out of 380 homes 130 remain; at Tremeloo two thirds of the community has been razed; at Bueken out of 100 houses 20 are left; at Schaffen a village of 200 dwellings 189 have disappeared; at Louvain one third of the town has been destroyed and 1074 buildings have disappeared.

  In that beloved city of Louvain the superb collegiate of St. Peter will never recover its splendour; the old college of St. Ives; the Institute of Fine Arts; the commercial and consular school attached to the University; the venerable Halles or market buildings; our Library with its collections, incunabula, original manuscripts, archives—all these intellectual, historic and artistic riches, the fruit of five centuries of toil, all has been destroyed.

  Many parishes are deprived of their curate … Thousands of Belgian citizens have been deported to German prisons—to Münster, to Celle, to Magdeburg. Munster alone holds 3100 civilian prisoners …

  Thousands of innocents have been shot. I do not possess the sinister necrology but I know that at Aerschot 143 were killed and their fellow citizens compelled to dig the burial trenches. In Louvain 176 people—men and women, old men, women with children, rich and poor, strong and weak, were shot down or burned.

  In my diocese alone I know thirteen priests have been executed. We can neither count our dead nor measure the extent of our ruins. What would it be if we were able to visit the regions of Liège, Namur, Andene, Dinant, Tamines, Charleroi, and then toward Virton and the valley of the Semois River, all the provinces of Luxembourg toward Termonde, Dixmude and our two Flanders?

  To the German military these were names they could not pronounce of places they did not care about but which, like the Belgian people, were an obstruction to the dream of the Second Reich, the dream of conquest and domination. Nothing and no one was sacrosanct. Any building might conceal armed dissenters; a woodland might house Allied soldiers; a seemingly innocuous letter might be from a spy or to enemy agents; a woman’s shopping basket might conceal weapons or clothes for a fugitive; a group of men in a café might be planning to attack the Germans, recruit Belgian soldiers, blow up a train, disseminate subversive views.

  For the Belgians in a matter of months all they had known as home, all they had built, worked for, and lived by was destroyed by a war machine that took everything from them, gave nothing to them and denied them the right even to express their opposition. “What do you think of these brave people?” Edith Cavell wrote in her Christmas letter to her mother of December 22. “They have suffered (& are suffering) a martyrdom and in silence. Their attitude is wonderful in reserve and dignity.” Anyone might be shot or imprisoned for an injudicious remark, for being in the wrong street, or for not complying with an ever-increasing plethora of laws and rules. That was war. But Christmas was a time of truce, for after all here were Christian countries, united by a belief in the obligation of charity and love. The Germans cut down the fir trees in the Belgian woods for their Christmas trees. At Liège 700 were cut down.

  At the Royal Palace Hospital the German sergeant in Ward 8 asked Sister Ruth Moore to join him, and the soldiers she had nursed, for a glass of punch on Christmas Eve. She declined, but in the morning a night nurse brought to her room a huge bouquet of white chrysanthemums from them all.

  In Britain that Christmas there was no particular material hardship. Sons, husbands and brothers did not return, but the bloodshed and pain to which they were consigned, the rats and mud of the trenches of the Western Front, the “monstrous anger” of guns and shells, were out of sight and sound. There were about 200,000 Belgian refugees in Britain. Technically they were the responsibility of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, but for the most part they were displaced in billets spread over the country. Norfolk turkeys were 10 d. a pound, there were plenty of Christmas trees, theaters and restaurants were full, the King and Queen went to Sandr
ingham, and the Asquiths went to Walmer Castle. The weather was dreadful and gales and blizzards uprooted trees and sank small ships in east coast harbors. The last horse-drawn tram was withdrawn in London. On Christmas Day a German monoplane flew over Sheerness but dropped no bombs. And so the four months that had seemed like a century to the soldiers and the Belgians extended into another year. The war had not gone the way Schlieffen and the German generals had planned. As it spread into a global battle for hegemony, as German soldiers died in their tens of thousands, and tentacles of enmity gripped the world, the Germany military authorities in Belgium became ever more oppressive and punishing. Allied soldiers separated from their regiments, if caught, could expect harsh treatment. The few who found their way to Edith Cavell’s door saw the light of hope. By November and December 1914 she had helped about twenty men to freedom. In the months that followed she helped hundreds.

  28

  ORGANIZATION

  Edith Cavell was a methodical woman. Keeping records was a part of hospital life. Like Eva Lückes she kept ledgers about her nurses—their personal details, work standards, progress and appointments—and about patients’ illnesses, operations, treatment and discharge. It was an all-female world of nurture and help. To it she brought stringent discipline, vigilance, and attention to detail. She kept the same standards in her work for Allied soldiers. In nursing she kept to a vision of the conquest of disease and suffering. As a subversive she kept to a vision of freedom and the defeat of tyranny.