A tale of two cities: Brussels and Dresden
On a recent trip to Norfolk we went with our two friends (formerly of Hunters Close, Tring) to Norwich Cathedral. In the Cathedral Close we saw the memorial to Edith Cavell, the British nurse shot dead by German soldiers at Schaerbeek, Brussels.
Edith Cavell was born in a Norfolk vicarage in 1865. After working as a governess for several years, she returned home to nurse her father through a serious illness. When he recovered, she decided to devote her life to nursing and started her training at the age of 30 at the London Hospital.
After her training she worked in various hospitals and as a private nurse. In 1907 she was recruited to a training hospital in Brussels, a city in which she had previously served as a governess.
In November 1914, after the German occupation of Brussels, Cavell began taking in British soldiers and helping them escape through neutral Netherlands. Wounded British, French and Belgian soldiers and civilians were cared for in secret in her Brussels home. In August 1915 she was arrested and imprisoned after being betrayed. She was charged with ‘war treason’ and held for ten weeks, the last two in solitary confinement.
The British Government tried to get her released, but to no avail. British diplomats in Washington thought that German leaders would listen to the (then) neutral United States of America, but the US Legation in Brussels likewise could achieve nothing. The German Governor, Count Harrach, said his only regret was that there were not ‘three or four old English women to shoot’. While other German leaders in Brussels wanted her saved, she received no reprieve.
The night before her execution she received communion from the Anglican Chaplain, the Revd Stirling Gahan. She told him, ‘Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone’. At midnight the American and Spanish Ambassadors to Brussels made one last failed appeal to the German Governor-General. She was shot, along with a young Belgian architect, at 7.00am on 12 October 1915 by eight German soldiers. She is remembered in the Church of England on that day every year.
In early 1945 my father was one of the first British soldiers into Dresden in the east of Germany. On the 14 February 772 RAF planes dropped over 2600 tons of bombs ‘on target’ to the city centre of Dresden, not the railway yards or the industrial area, but the houses where women, children and old men were living. Many of these were incendiary bombs which produced a firestorm so great that underground air raid shelters had the air sucked out of them, leaving those in them to die of asphyxiation. It is difficult to know how many died but the figure is probably close to 25,000. At least 22,096 bodies were recovered at the time and a further 1,858 bodies were discovered during reconstruction works from 1946 to 1966.
My father seldom spoke about his war, like many men of his generation, but he could never accept that this attack on non-combatants was morally justified. Interestingly my eldest son, while training as an RAF pilot, wrote an essay on the ethics of war, saying the same thing about the bombing of Dresden without ever hearing what his grandfather thought on the subject. Perhaps the Church of England should remember the 14 February as well.
Shared by Jon Reynolds
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