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Edith Cavell: And Bravely Fought the Nurse

Edith Cavell was born to a priest's family in Norwich. Marton Eva Luckes trained her as a nurse in Brussels. L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées on the Rue de la Culture in Brussels was the place where she became a matron. By 1910, Miss Cavell ‘felt that the profession of nursing had gained sufficient foothold in Belgium to warrant the publishing of a professional journal’, and therefore launched the nursing journal, L'infirmière. A year later, she was a training nurse for three hospitals, 24 schools and 13 kindergartens in Belgium.

When World War I broke out, she was visiting her widowed mother in Norfolk. She returned to Brussels where her clinic and nursing school were taken over by the Red Cross.

In the autumn of 1914, after the German occupation of Brussels, Cavell began sheltering British soldiers and funnelling them out of occupied Belgium to neutral Holland. In the following months, an underground organization developed, allowing her to guide some 200 Allied soldiers to safety, which placed Cavell in violation of German military law. German authorities became increasingly suspicious of the nurse's actions, which were reinforced by Cavell's own disregard and outspokenness.

She was arrested on 3 August 1915 and charged with harbouring Allied soldiers. She was held in St Gilles prison for 10 weeks, the last two in solitary confinement and court-martialed.

The British government said they could do nothing to help her. Sir Horace Rowland of the Foreign Office said, ‘I am afraid that it is likely to go hard with Miss Cavell; I am afraid we are powerless’. The sentiment was echoed by Lord Robert Cecil, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. ‘Any representation by us’, he advised, ‘will do her more harm than good'. The United States, which had not yet joined the war, did not agree. Hugh S. Gibson, First Secretary of the American legation at Brussels, made clear to the German government that executing Cavell would further harm their nation's already damaged reputation. Later, he wrote:

We reminded him (Baron von der Lancken) of the burning of Louvain and the sinking of the Lusitania and told him that this murder would stir all civilized countries with horror and disgust. Count Harrach broke in at this with the remark that he would rather see Miss Cavell shot than have harm come to one of the humblest German soldiers, and his only regret was that they had not three or four English old women to shoot.

The German civil governor, Baron von der Lancken, is known to have stated that Cavell should be pardoned because of her complete honesty and because she had helped save so many lives, German as well as Allied. However, the German military acted quickly to execute Cavell to deny higher authorities the opportunity to consider clemency.

She was not arrested for espionage as many were led to believe, but for treason. Of the 27 put on trial, Cavell and four others were condemned to death, among them Philippe Baucq, an architect in his thirties who was also instrumental in the escapes.

When in custody, Cavell was asked questions in French, with transcripts made in German. This process gave the inquisitor the opportunity to misinterpret her answers. Although she may have been misrepresented, she made no attempt to defend herself. Cavell was provided with a defender approved by the German military governor. A previous defender, who was chosen for Cavell by her assistant, Elizabeth Wilkins, was ultimately denied by the governor.

The night before her execution, she told the Reverend Stirling Gahan, the Anglican chaplain who had been allowed to see her and to give her Holy Communion, ‘Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’ These words are inscribed on her statue in St Martin's Place, near Trafalgar Square in London. Her final words to the German Lutheran prison chaplain, Paul Le Seur, were recorded as, ‘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.’

Despite efforts by American minister Brand Whitlock and the Marquis de Villalobar, the Spanish minister to Belgium, on Cavell's behalf, on 11 October, Baron Von Der Lancken allowed the execution to proceed. Sixteen men, composed of two firing squads, carried out her sentence along with four Belgian men at Tir Nationalshooting range in Schaerbeek, at 6 am on 12 October 1915. There are conflicting reports of the details of Cavell's execution. However, according to the eyewitness account of the Reverend Le Seur, who attended Cavell in her final hours, eight soldiers fired at Cavell while the other eight executed Philippe Baucq.

There is also a dispute over the sentencing imposed under German Military Code. Supposedly, the death penalty equivalent to the offence committed by Cavell was not officially declared until a few hours after her death.

With instructions from the Spanish minister, Belgian women immediately buried her body next to St. Gilles Prison. After the war, her body was taken back to Britain for a memorial service at Westminster Abbey and again transferred to Norwich, to finally be laid to rest at Life's Green.

Vocabulary

1. Warrant: Make it necessary
2. Funnelling: The expression generally refers to the passage of things through a conical channel. Here, it suggests that Edith was the channel through whom British soldiers found a way to neutral Holland.
3. Outspokenness: The nature of being frank and honest with one's opinion
4. Confinement: Imprisonment, a state of restriction
5. Court-martialed: Trial in a military court where the accused is charged with treason or acting against the military code of conduct
6. Espionage: Spy missions in foreign countries
7. Treason: Acting against the interests of the state under whose rule one is placed
8. Instrumental: Being the key to a certain event
9. Inquisitor: A kind of character who participates in witch-hunting trying to extract information of people's secret crimes or sins. In the middle ages, Spain had catholic inquistors whose responsibility was to compell individuals to confess their moments of untruth and interaction with the Devil.
10. Transcripts: Records of oral communication in an official atmosphere

Reading Comprehension

On the basis of the above passage, answer the following questions:

1. Who was the teacher of Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell?
2. Name the journal that Edith Cavell started. What was the language in which it was published?
3. What happened to her clinic and nursing school after World War I broke out?
4. What did Edith do to earn the ire of the Germans? How far was their dissapproval justified?
5. What was the charge under which Edith was arrested? From a purely legal point of view, was it justifiable?
6. Explain Edith's comment: ‘Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’
7. Describe the way in which Edith was executed. Do you think it was unecessarily cruel?

Language

Read the following sentences:

1. ‘Edith Cavell was¹ born to a priest's family in Norwich. Marton Eva Luckes trained² her as a nurse in Brussels’.
2. ‘A year later, she was³ a training nurse for three hospitals, 24 schools and 13 kindergartens in Belgium’.
3. ‘When World War I broke out, she was visiting⁴ her widowed mother in Norfolk’.

All these sentences deal with events that refer to situations in the past. 1, 2 and 3 are simple past tenses, whereas 4 refers to the past continuous tense.

Correct the following sentences:

1. Sumithra was the incharge of the intensive care unit since last year.
2. Nurses from Kollam administer pulse polio vaccines in the spring camp that take place last year.
3. Last month, nurses from our unit apply for positions in the United Kingdom.
4. The doctor is angry with the nurse who is misbehave with a patient.
5. When my son is recovering from burns, it is a nurse from Calicut who help him the most.
6. While I administer fluids to the patient, he collapse and become unconscious.
7. Throughout the night, the old woman gasp for breath and the doctor is late to come.
8. We were knowing that the patient will take time to recover.
9. Se is a good nurse in the pediatrics department. She take good care of babies there.
10. The nurse call the doctor as the patient do not respond to ventilator.

Functions

Read the following conversation between two nursing assistants:

Roselyn: Maria, can you check the patient in Room 101, please.

Maria: Sure. What's up?

Roselyn: I think her IV fluid inflow has stopped. It needs to be restarted. You might need to create a new channel as well.

Maria: No problem. I'll be there in a minute.

Roselyn: Thanks a ton, Maria.

Now check the words in bold. These words are functions that facilitate conversation making it lively. These are language units linked to specific communicative contexts. The more you talk, the more you are adept at handling such functions. The functions like ‘What's up?’ are phrases that belong to a longer sentence structure. For instance, ‘What is up with X?’ has been shortened to ‘What's up?’ These contractions are peculiar to speech communication. Qualifiers like ‘you might need’ are ways of imparting instructions. The expression ‘no problem’ expresses agreement and is a part of the language structure, it is not a problem. Learning these words and expressions are essential ways of learning communicative grammar.

Imagine another problem and another way of trouble shooting.

Here are some cues. Fill in the blanks using your own words.

Roselyn: Hi Maria! Can you please check __________ in Room 105?

Maria: Hi! _______, but what is the _____________?

Roselyn: The doctor is dressing the patient, and she has run out of _____ _________.

Maria: Right. I'll get some from our ______ and write a prescription for it.

Roselyn: _________!

Pronunciation: ‘-ed’ ending

While the –ed ending in written communication forms the past tense of regular verbs, in spoken communication, the –ed ending can have different pronunciations. It can sound like [t] (as in stopped); [d] (as in saved); or [Id] (as in loaded)

Writing

Write a paragraph about a nurse's day in the hospital. You are privy to a diary she keeps. Read the diary to formulate your paragraph.

Remember that a paragraph is about one main idea. The sentence expressing that idea is called a topic sentence. In a paragraph, one must avoid writing any sentence that exceeds the scope of the topic sentence.

Here are some pointers from which the topic sentence is expected to emerge.

1. I reached the ward at half-past eight.
2. Sheela was in a bad mood. A patient had passed away in the night.
3. The handover note was quite a mess. A number of tests were due. Someone who was advised Magnex hadn't got it from the dispensary.
4. Had lunch with Rose. She is getting married next month.
5. There were two new patients from the theatre. Both were on ventilation.
6. Didn't get time for tea in the evening.

Topic sentence: It was an extremely busy day.

Concluding sentence: A nurse in a government hospital has a tough time.

Remember: That the topic sentence and the concluding sentence match in terms of purpose and register. Do not try to introduce a new strand as you close your discussion.