October 12, 1915: The Martyrdom of Edith Cavell

October 12, 1915: Edith Cavell is executed for treason in Brussels, Belgium. The English nurse's crime was saving the lives of soldiers from both sides of World War I, without discrimination, and helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.

She was born on December 4, 1865 in Swardeston, Norfolk, East Anglia, England. After a period as a governess, including for a family in the Belgian capital of Brussels from 1890 to 1895, Cavell returned home to care for her father during a serious illness. The experience led her to become a nurse after her father's recovery.

She was already considered a pioneer of nursing in Belgium when World War I broke out in August 1914. In November, after Germany occupied Brussels, Cavell began sheltering British soldiers, and funnelling them out of occupied Belgium to the Netherlands, which was neutral in the war.

This placed Cavell in violation of German military law, and she was arrested on August 3, 1915. The night before her execution, she was permitted to take Communion, and she said, "Patriotism is not enough," and, "I can't stop while there are lives to be saved." She was 49 years old.

She became an iconic propaganda figure for military recruitment in Britain, and to help increase favorable sentiment towards the Allies in the United States. Along with the invasion of Belgium, and the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, Cavell's execution was widely publicized in both Britain and North America by Wellington House, the British War Propaganda Bureau.

She was a popular icon because of her sex, her nursing profession, and her apparently heroic approach to death. Her execution was represented as an act of German barbarism and moral depravity, at variance with Cavell's own clearly stated wish to have "no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." She is and is celebrated as a saint by the Church of England. 

Doctors have ignored nationality to aid patients. Bert Shepard, a former minor-league pitcher, who lost a leg when his plane was shot down over Germany in World War II, was treated by a German doctor. He eventually pitched a game for the Washington Senators on a prosthesis. Nearly 50 years later, he went to Germany and was reunited with the doctor who saved his life.

On the TV show M*A*S*H, set during the Korean War in the early 1950s, Hawkeye (Alan Alda) was sometimes admonished for operating on Chinese and North Korean soldiers wounded more severely than American soldiers. He didn't care, saying, "All blood is red." In both of these cases, Edith Cavell would have approved.

Another British person of note to die as a result of the war on this day was Captain Charles H. Sorley, a Scottish poet. He was killed in action in the Battle of Loos, in Hulluch, France, near the border with Belgium. He was only 20.

He wrote this, titled "To Germany":

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,

And no man claimed the conquest of your land.

But gropers both through fields of thought confined

We stumble and we do not understand.

You only saw your future bigly planned,

And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,

And in each other's dearest ways we stand,

And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again

With new-won eyes each other's truer form

And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm

We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,

When it is peace. But until peace, the storm

The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

*

October 12, 1915 was a Tuesday. There was one score on this historic day, and it was in Game 4 of the World Series. The Boston Red Sox beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1. Ernie Shore outpitched George Chalmers. The Sox wrapped the title up the next day, 4 games to 1.

The previous year, while waiting for their 40,000-seat Braves Field to be completed, the Boston Braves abandoned their 10,000-seat South End Grounds, and rented Fenway Park from the Red Sox for the rest of the season, including the World Series. Braves Field opened on August 18, 1915, and, since it was larger than Fenway, the Braves returned the favor, and the Red Sox played their "home" games of the 1915, 1916 and 1918 World Series at Braves Field. While they played their home games at brand-new Fenway Park in 1912, it would be 1946 before they hosted another Series game there.