"Belgian men had attempted to flee the occupied territories to join the Belgian army on the Yser front, via the Netherlands which were neutral. To stop this, the Germans began work on a barbed wire and electric fence across the length of the border. The fence, dubbed the Wire of Death (""Dodendraad""), was also guarded by German sentries. Between 2,000 and 3,000 civilians are believed to have been killed attempting to cross the border during the conflict. Captured resistance members were also executed by the German authorities. Famously, Edith Cavell, a British nurse who had lived in Belgium before the"
"set out for France. She worked as a nurse, at the family home of Chateau de Bellignies, which was in use as a hospital, and assisted Edith Cavell in helping allied servicemen to escape to Britain via the Netherlands. For this she was arrested in 1915 along with Nurse Cavell and a number of others, but escaped the death penalty. At their trial in October, she asked for clemency for her fellow prisoners, claiming that she and her brother were solely responsible. She was condemned to ten years' hard labour, and sent to a prison at Siegburg in Germany. The"
"World War broke out in 1914. In addition to nursing soldiers from both sides without distinction, she assisted some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium. She was arrested in August 1915, court-martialled, found guilty of treason, and shot by a German firing squad on 12 October 1915. Her story was used in British propaganda as an example of German barbarism and moral depravity. Her remains were initially buried in Belgium, but returned to Britain after the war in May 1919 for a state funeral at Westminster Abbey before she was finally buried at Norwich Cathedral. Although Cavell's sister, Lilian"
"1915 for assisting troops to escape from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands, was a heroine in her youth. She trained as a nurse and became a commercial artist in Malmédy. She was only twenty-five when the Nazis invaded Belgium. Her nursing endeavours were inspired by Cavell. After German troops invaded Belgium in May 1940, De Jongh moved to Brussels, where she became a Red Cross volunteer, ministering to captured Allied troops. In Brussels at that time, hiding in safe houses, were many British soldiers, those left behind at Dunkirk and escapees from those captured at Saint-Valery-en-Caux. De Jongh organized"
"it. Arrested by the Germans on 20 October 1915 near Tournai, she was sentenced to forced labor for life on 16 March 1916 in Brussels. After being held for three years, she died on 27 September 1918 as a result of pleural abscesses poorly operated upon at St. Mary's Hospital in Cologne. Her body was repatriated on 21 February 1920. On 16 March 1920 a funeral was held in Lille in which she was posthumously awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the Croix de guerre 1914-1918 with palm, and the British Military Medal, and she was made an"
"must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."" These words were later inscribed on a memorial to her near Trafalgar Square. Her strong Anglican beliefs propelled her to help all those who needed it, both German and Allied soldiers. She was quoted as saying, ""I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved."" The Church of England commemorates her in its Calendar of Saints on 12 October. Cavell, who was 49 at the time of her execution, was already notable as a pioneer of modern nursing in Belgium. Cavell was born on 4 December 1865 in Swardeston, a village"
"Brussels who was involved in a network helping allied prisoners to escape. This was in violation of German military law, and as a result she was court-martialled for treason, and having been found guilty was executed in 1915. The story was reported, however, in a way that presented the event as the murder of an innocent houser of refugees. Following her death, the story was reproduced by Wellington House for many propaganda campaigns, both domestically and to the United States. Pamphlets and images depicted her execution as an act of German barbarity. Soon after this incident, the French shot two"
"age were hidden from the Germans and provided with false papers by Prince Réginald de Croÿ at his château of Bellignies near Mons. From there, they were conducted by various guides to the houses of Cavell, Louis Séverin, and others in Brussels, where their hosts would furnish them with money to reach the Dutch frontier, and provide them with guides obtained through Philippe Baucq. This placed Cavell in violation of German military law. German authorities became increasingly suspicious of the nurse's actions, which were further fuelled by her outspokenness. She was arrested on 3 August 1915 and charged with harbouring"
"that Germany had invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. She was assigned to operations in support of Allied forces, and spent the next week operating in the North Sea off the Dutch coast. She and the destroyer transported a party of Royal Marines to the Hook of Holland in the Netherlands on 12 May 1940. On 15 May she embarked refugees at Amsterdam in the Netherlands and picked up 46 or 48 (sources differ) refugees aboard the Dutch lifeboat ""Zeemanshoop"" in the North Sea and took them to Dover, England. Her operations focused on the evacuation of Allied personnel"
"de Jongh (nickname ""Dédée"") was 24 in 1940 and lived in Brussels. She was the younger daughter of Frédéric de Jongh, a headmaster, and Alice Decarpentrie. A heroine of Dédée's in her youth had been Edith Cavell, a British nurse who was shot in 1915 in the Tir National in Schaerbeek for helping troops escape from occupied Belgium to neutral Netherlands. In August 1941 Andrée de Jongh appeared in the British consulate in Bilbao with a British soldier (James Cromar from Aberdeen) and two Belgian volunteers (Merchiers and Sterckmans), having travelled by train from Paris to Bayonne and then on"
"joined the British Red Cross in 1913. In August 1914, with the start of the First World War, she was sent as leader of a group of nurses to a hospital in Charleroi, Belgium. Soon the occupying German army ordered all British nurses to leave and forced her to go to Copenhagen under armed escort. From there she travelled north through Sweden and Finland to reach Russia, where she joined the flying column, or mobile medical unit, headed by Prince and Princess Peter Volkonsky. As part of this unit she tended to the wounded in Łódź after it was bombarded,"
"Mary Helen Young Mary Helen Young (5 June 1883 – 14 March 1945) was a Scottish nurse and resistance fighter who helped British servicemen escape from Nazi-occupied France during World War II. She was imprisoned by the Gestapo and put to death at Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1945. Young was born on 5 June 1883 in Aberdeen to Elizabeth Ann Burnett (1854–1884) and Alexander Young (1855–1913), a clerk. Her mother died while she was a baby, after which she moved with her family, her father and two elder sisters, to Edinburgh. After school, she worked as a dressmaker at Jenners"
"Kate ter Horst Kate ter Horst MBE (born 6 July 1906, Amsterdam – 21 February 1992, Oosterbeek) was a Dutch full-time housewife and mother who tended wounded and dying Allied soldiers during the Battle of Arnhem. Her British patients nicknamed her the ""Angel of Arnhem"". Her daughter Sophie Lambrechtsen light-heartedly noted in 2014 that ‘She [Kate] hated all that,’ and that ‘She just did what lots of people did.’ Ter Horst was born Kate Anna Arriëns, daughter of Pieter Albert Arriëns and Catharina Maingay. She married Jan ter Horst, a lawyer from Rotterdam, with whom she had six children. One"
"also remembered in the Five Sisters Window at York Minster in York, England. Catherine Fox (nurse) Catherine Anne Fox (18 May 1877 - 23 October 1915) was a New Zealand nurse who served in World War I and died when the SS ""Marquette"" was torpedoed and sunk in 1915. Fox was born at Cardrona, near Queenstown, New Zealand. The family moved to Hawea Flat and later Waimate. She completed her nursing training at Dunedin Hospital. After qualifying, Fox nursed in Christchurch, Waimate and Auckland. In July 1915, she enlisted in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service and left Wellington on"
"Lily McNicholas Lily McNicholas (16 October 1909 – 5 March 1998) was an Irish nurse who volunteered in the Second World War. On 7 August 1944, McNicholas survived the sinking of the ""Amsterdam;"" a hospital carrier transporting casualties to Britain from Normandy, France. The incident was widely reported in the press after the ""London Gazette"" announced that McNicholas and two other nurses were to be awarded the M.B.E. for their heroic actions. McNicholas was born on Kiltimagh, Mayo, Ireland to Thomas and Bridget McNicholas. After attending the St. Louis Convent Secondary School in the town, she left Ireland in the"
"Nellie Spindler Nellie Spindler (September 1891 – 21 August 1917) was a staff nurse who was killed during the Battle of Passchendaele. She is one of only two British female casualties of World War I buried in Belgium and the only woman buried among more than 10,000 men at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. Nellie Spindler was born to Elizabeth and George Kealey Spindler in Wakefield, Yorkshire. Her father was a police sergeant, and later inspector, in Wakefield City Police. Spindler entered nursing in 1911 at the City Fever Hospital, Wakefield and trained at Leeds Township Infirmary from 1912 to 1915. She"
"Nellie Spindler Nellie Spindler (September 1891 – 21 August 1917) was a staff nurse who was killed during the Battle of Passchendaele. She is one of only two British female casualties of World War I buried in Belgium and the only woman buried among more than 10,000 men at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. Nellie Spindler was born to Elizabeth and George Kealey Spindler in Wakefield, Yorkshire. Her father was a police sergeant, and later inspector, in Wakefield City Police. Spindler entered nursing in 1911 at the City Fever Hospital, Wakefield and trained at Leeds Township Infirmary from 1912 to 1915. She"
"the sentence pronounced on her and on four Belgian men at the Tir national shooting range in Schaerbeek, at 7:00am 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 Baucq. Her execution, certification of death, and burial were all witnessed by the German poet Gottfried Benn in his capacity as a 'Senior Doctor in the Brussels Government since the first days of the (German) occupation'. Benn wrote"
"contingent of nurses worked in a stationary hospital there. In October 1915 Fox was on board the SS ""Marquette"" when it was torpedoed by a German submarine and sunk. A commemorative plaque to Fox, and fellow ""Marquette"" casualties Mary Gorman and Isabel Clark, was placed in Waimate Hospital. The hospital also named its women's ward ""Marquette"" in memory of the three nurses. When the hospital closed in 1996, the plaque was moved to a display at the Waimate Museum. Fox is named on the Mikra British Cemetery in Greece and in the Nurses' Memorial Chapel at Christchurch Hospital. She is"
"""Bastogne"", a Belgian nurse named Renée (portrayed by Lucie Jeanne) and a Congolese nurse named Anna (portrayed by Rebecca Okot) were shown to work tirelessly with American medics, including Eugene Roe, to help wounded soldiers. Historical accounts of Lemaire do not mention Roe. Renée Lemaire Renée Lemaire was a Belgian nurse who volunteered her service at an American military aid station during the Siege of Bastogne in December 1944. She was killed during a German air raid on Christmas Eve in 1944. Renée Bernadette Émilie Lemaire was born on 10 April 1914 in Bastogne to Gustave Lemaire and Bertha Gallée."
"death. She appealed the conviction, but in September 1947 the Special Court of Appeals confirmed her punishment. Her request for a royal pardon was also rejected. On 14 January 1948 she was executed by firing squad at Fort Bijlmer in the Weesperkarspel municipality (now the Bijlmermeer district of the city of Amsterdam). The night before her execution she was baptized and joined the Roman Catholic Church. Ans van Dijk Anna ""Ans"" van Dijk (Amsterdam, December 24, 1905 – Weesperkarspel, January 14, 1948) was a Dutch-Jewish collaborator who betrayed Jews to Nazi Germany during World War II. She was the only"
"war, was arrested after helping Allied soldiers to escape the country and was executed by a German firing squad in 1915. Another ""résistante"", Gabrielle Petit, who had participated in various forms of resistance activity, was executed in 1916 at the ""Tir national"" in Schaerbeek and became a posthumous national heroine. A resistance movement developed in Belgium soon after the German occupation. The resistance took various forms. Although some sabotages by the resistance, notably the destruction of the Brussels-Aachen railway line, were celebrated at the time, armed resistance represented a minority of their acts. Around 300 separate resistance networks existed which"
"heroine. Gabrielle Petit Gabrielle Alina Eugenia Maria Petit (20 February 1893 – 1 April 1916) was a Belgian woman who spied for the British Secret Service during World War I. Executed in 1916, she became a Belgian national heroine after the war's end. Petit was born on 20 February 1893 in Tournai to working-class parents. She was raised in a Catholic boarding school in Brugelette following her mother's early death. At the outbreak of the First World War, she was living in Brussels as a saleswoman. She immediately volunteered to serve with the Belgian Red Cross. Petit's espionage activities began"
"Renée Lemaire Renée Lemaire was a Belgian nurse who volunteered her service at an American military aid station during the Siege of Bastogne in December 1944. She was killed during a German air raid on Christmas Eve in 1944. Renée Bernadette Émilie Lemaire was born on 10 April 1914 in Bastogne to Gustave Lemaire and Bertha Gallée. Her parents owned a hardware store in Bastogne. She had two sisters, Gisèle and Marguerite. Lemaire had been a nurse in Brussels during the war. Renée Lemaire was the fiancée of a Jew arrested in Brussels by the Gestapo earlier in the year."
"She worked closely with Dr Depage who was part of a ""growing body of people"" in the medical profession in Belgium. He realised that the care that was being provided by the religious institutions had not been keeping up with medical advances. In 1910 Cavell was asked if she would be the matron for the new secular hospital at St Gilles. In November 1914, after the German occupation of Brussels, Cavell began sheltering British soldiers and funnelling them out of occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands. Wounded British and French soldiers as well as Belgian and French civilians of military"
"also remembered in the Five Sisters Window at York Minster in York, England. In Kumara, there is a plaque in the Kumara Memorial Hall and a memorial bed in the Kumara Hospital. Mabel Jamieson Mabel Elizabeth Jamieson (21 July 1881 – 23 October 1915) was a New Zealand nurse who served in World War I and died when the SS ""Marquette"" was torpedoed and sunk in 1915. Jamieson was born in 1881 in Kumara, on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Her parents were Thomas and Frances Jamieson. She trained as a nurse at Palmerston North"
"to a display at the Waimate Museum. Gorman is named on the Mikra British Cemetery in Greece and in the Nurses' Memorial Chapel at Christchurch Hospital. She is also remembered in the Five Sisters Window at York Minster in York, England. Mary Gorman Mary Gorman (10 May 1881 – 23 October 1915) was a New Zealand nurse who served in World War I and died when the SS ""Marquette"" was torpedoed and sunk in 1915. Gorman was born in Waimate, New Zealand, on 10 May 1881 to John and Catherine Gorman. Her father was a railway worker. Gorman completed her"
"Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service (SWH). She was the first doctor from the SWH sent to France and was initially placed in Boulogne, France. While looking for a building to house a hospital, a typhoid epidemic broke out amongst Belgian refugees in Calais. She, along with another doctor and ten nurses, treated the patients. She was noted for having the lowest rate of deaths due to typhoid in her hospital. In May 1915, she and her unit, named the London-Wales Unit, were sent to Serbia. On their way there, they stopped in British controlled Malta. They were detained by"
"Five Sisters Window at York Minster in York, England. Mary Rae Mary Helen Rae (29 September 1880 – 23 October 1915) was a New Zealand nurse who served in World War I and died when the SS ""Marquette"" was torpedoed and sunk in 1915. Rae was born at Raes' Junction, near Dunedin, on 29 September 1880 and trained at Dunedin Public Hospital. In April 1915, Rae enlisted in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service and left Wellington on board the SS ""Maheno"" in July that year. The ship sailed to Suez, Egypt, and the contingent of nurses worked in a"
"in England, Cavell began her nursing career in 1895 at a London hospital. Later she became the first matron of the Berkendael Medical Institute in Brussels. In the course of her work there, Nurse Cavell helped British, French, and Belgian soldiers escape across the Dutch Frontier. For these activities, Edith Cavell was tried as a spy by the Germans and was executed. KENNY (Green) Named after Elizabeth Kenny (1886–1952), the Australian nurse known for her technique of treating poliomyelitis, or infantile paralysis, Kenny developed a system of therapy, which was sometimes too elaborate, too extensive and too time-consuming. However, Elizabeth"
"the trust. Edith Cavell was executed in 1915 during the First World War by a German firing squad. A year after her death ""The Lancet"" published a letter from her sister, who wrote to say Edith ""had long cherished the idea of establishing homes of rest for nurses."" An appeal was set up, with the Edith Cavell Homes of Rest for Nurses registered as a war charity. By July 1918 Queen Alexandra had become the patron. The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror launched a national appeal for funds in her memory. The appeal by the newspapers raised £12,500. By"
"Lorna Rattray Lorna Aylmer Rattray (10 January 1875 – 23 October 1915) was a New Zealand nurse who served in World War I and died when the SS ""Marquette"" was torpedoed and sunk in 1915. Rattray was born in Dunedin. After qualifying, Rattray nursed in Christchurch. In July 1915, she enlisted in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service and left Wellington on board the SS ""Maheno"". The ship sailed to Port Said, Egypt, and the contingent of nurses worked in a stationary hospital there. In October 1915 Rattray was on board the SS ""Marquette"" when it was torpedoed by a"
"the British military and ordered to treat the wounded there. This was the only time in the war where SWH officially treated British wounded. After two weeks in Malta they arrived in Serbia to set up 40-tent hospital in Valjevo. In October, an invasion of German and Austro-Hungarian forces entered Serbia, pushing back the army. After Bulgaria invaded, the Serbian military decided to retreat through Albania. Hutchinson decided to not follow the Serbian army but stayed with her patients. She was captured by Austro-Hungarian forces on 15 November 1915. She, along with members of her unit, spent three months interned"