Brussels, a prison yard, a German firing squad, and a nurse of forty-nine who had spent years building a training school for nurses in that city. Edith Cavell had treated the wounded of both sides, and helped some two hundred Allied soldiers out of occupied Belgium. The night before, in 1915, she told the chaplain sitting with her that patriotism was not enough, and that she must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
The Church of England keeps her memory on this date, Ada, alongside Elizabeth Fry and Octavia Hill — nurse, prison reformer, housing reformer, all three remembered together. The chaplain who sat with her that night, Stirling Gahan, wrote down what she said, which is how we have it at all.
Ada, she was brought home in 1919 — the coffin crossed to Dover, then a service at Westminster Abbey, then a train to Norwich, where she was buried beside the cathedral. Crowds stood along the line for it.