19.08.02
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ
History Magazine reveals executed WWI nurse's links with British
intelligence service nurse
Edith
Cavell, the British nurse executed in Brussels by the Germans in
the First World War for helping British servicemen escape, was closely
connected to Britain's intelligence service, the September issue
of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ History Magazine (on sale Tuesday 20 August) reveals.
Her
fate influenced Secret Service policy on prisoners in the Second
World War, newly studied Public Record Office documents reveal.
Between
November 1914 and August 1915 the `Cavell Organisation' in occupied
Brussels smuggled scores of British stragglers into Holland, providing
them with false identity papers, money and couriers. Nurse Cavell
escorted men to meet the guides who led them to the neutral Dutch
border.
After
the arrest of two of her associates, Philippe Baucq and Louise Thillez,
Cavell was also arrested and, despite worldwide protests, shot by
firing squad. Her `martyrdom' became an Allied cause celebre and
a statue of her was put up near Trafalgar Square, with her body
interred in the cathedral of her native city, Norwich, after the
war.
Baucq
was also executed but Thuillez's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
When she returned from captivity in Germany at the end of the fighting,
Henry Baron, who had been a British agent in France working with
the Cavell Organisation, raised concerns that Thuillez was about
to recount "Miss Cavell's participation in the business of
espionage".
Louise
Thuillez later wrote a long report on the Cavell Organisation in
which she admitted that, while working with Cavell, she had actively
sought out military information on a German supply dump near Cambrai
in occupied France, and had been depositing the plans with Baucq
when they were both arrested.
Please
remember to credit Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ History Magazine's September issue.
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