Edith Cavell: World War I Nurse and Heroine

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Libiez’s son–a member of the Belgian escape organization–then took over escort duties and accompanied the British soldiers into Mons, where they stayed three days at the home of Louis Dervaire in the Rue de la Gare. There, they had their photographs taken and were given fake civilian identity cards. Capiau then escorted them to Cavell’s institute on November 1.

Edith Cavell was one of the most fascinating characters of World War I. Forty-seven years old when Boger and Meachin met her, she had been born in a large Georgian-style farmhouse in the English village of Swardeston in the county of Norfolk. Her father, a vicar, was a strict Victorian.

Cavell first worked as a governess for a family in Brussels, then became a nurse. By 1911, she was training nurses for three hospitals, 24 schools and 13 kindergartens in Belgium. She was a brisk, businesslike, rather straight-laced woman with a high crown of graying hair and gray eyes.

Her sense of duty bordered on the fanatical, and she demanded the highest standards from her pupil nurses. She kept a watch before her at breakfast; any girl more than two minutes late would be ordered to work an extra two hours. She was often ‘cold, distant and aloof,’ according to one of her staff.

In August 1914, Cavell was spending a short holiday with her mother, who was then living in Norwich after her husband’s death. Edith was weeding her mother’s back garden when she heard the dramatic news that Germany had invaded Belgium. ‘I am needed more than ever,’ she said, and immediately left for the Continent. Her mother never saw her again.

Cavell and her staff were hard at work at the training school in the suburbs of Brussels when the German army occupied the city. All 60 British nurses were ordered home, but Edith somehow remained behind. German nurses arrived to replace the British nurses and, together with all the remaining Belgian girls, were sent out to hospitals in the city as required.

It was contrary to Cavell’s nature to refuse help to anyone in distress, and Boger and Meachin were hidden in the institute for two weeks. When Cavell heard that the Germans were going to search the building, she ordered Sister White to take the soldiers to an empty house in nearby Avenue Louise. Sister White then came under German suspicion and wisely decided to leave the country. Just before Christmas 1914, she crossed the Dutch frontier–carrying military information for the British, obtained by Colonel Boger, hidden in her underclothes.

Cavell still considered Boger and Meachin to be in danger and, with the help of two English civilians living in Brussels (who so far had been left alone by the German authorities), arranged for them to be accompanied by a guide out of the city. Boger, still lame, was to travel down the canals to the border aboard a coal barge, while the sergeant major, who could walk but could not speak French, would be disguised as a peasant collecting fish in Holland.

The two soldiers stayed together as far as Ghent. Meachin made friends with a Belgian smuggling newspapers across the frontier into neutral Holland, reached the border and made a dash for it. Eventually, he got back to England, returned to the front and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

Colonel Boger was recaptured when German soldiers raided a cafe where he was having a drink; he was sent to a POW camp at Ruhleben for the rest of the war. He was later awarded the Distinguished Service Order.

At the Berkendael Institute, more fugitive soldiers arrived and all received help from Cavell. But the danger that the Germans would discover the secret of the institute grew daily. British soldiers staying there were warned not to go out. Nevertheless, one night several of them walked to a cafe down the road and got drunk. Before long, it became widely known that Cavell was harboring British and French troops under her roof.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Women's History