HELEN FRY

In mid-August 1914, shortly after the outbreak of war, British nurse Edith Cavell received a mysterious visit at her nursing clinic in Brussels from two intelligence officers working for Mansfield Cumming, ‘C’, head of the British Secret Service. Within a matter of weeks one of her couriers had undertaken a secret mission to the Admiralty in London; scant details of which survive in the only remaining fragments of her diary.

 

With the use of extensive declassified archives in Brussels and London, Helen Fry pieces together the secret life of Cavell and stories of the men and women who risked their lives to rescue soldiers and smuggle intelligence to the British. By the end of 1914, Cavell had created a permanent clandestine organisation for the escape of British and French soldiers from German-occupied Belgium and for the collection of military information. Messages were sewn into the lining of soldiers’ clothing or hidden in the soles of their shoes and taken to England. The embryonic network was not sophisticated; its members had no prior experience or training and relied on their own initiative. German counter-intelligence officers began to close in on the organisation and Helen uncovers evidence for the mysterious period when Cavell went into hiding in Ghent in April 1915.

 

This research finally places on record the full extent of Cavell’s legacy; operations for which she paid with her own life when, on 12 October 1915, she faced a German firing squad at dawn. She is one of the greatest heroines of World War One.