Silent in an Evil Time (13 page)

The point that Stoeber was getting at was Edith's violation of the section in the German military code against conducting men to the enemy. These were men, in Stoeber's view, who would return to fight against Germany.

“My preoccupation,” Edith answered, “has not been to aid the enemy but to help the men who applied to me to reach the frontier. Once across the frontier, they were free.”

The defense in Edith's answer was that she concerned herself only with assisting the men to reach Holland. What they did afterwards was beyond her control. The escaped soldiers made their own decisions.

At noon, after Stoeber questioned the other defendants, the court recessed for lunch. No food had been arranged for the defendants, who weren't allowed to leave the Senate chamber. But a few of the forty guards on court duty gave them sips of water and samples from the huge tank of soup that was wheeled into the chamber to feed the guards.

During the break, Louise Thuliez whispered to Edith, asking her opinion of the court proceedings so far.

“I think Baucq, Capiau, you, and I stand a bad chance,” Edith whispered back. “But what does it matter so long as we are not shot?”

Edith had convinced herself from the time of her arrest that she would probably receive a sentence of two or three years in prison. As the trial proceeded, she held on to that belief. A penalty of death was beyond her imagining.

In the afternoon, the most heartbreaking scene of the trial took place when Stoeber called Philippe Bodart, the teenage son of Ada, to the witness stand. Philippe had spent the weeks since his arrest in prison. In
court, Stoeber warned the boy that if he didn't tell the truth, he would be sent to prison for ten years of hard labor. Philippe was terrified, and he answered all the questions Stoeber asked about his mother's contribution to the secret organization. Philippe felt he had no choice. At the end of his testimony, he walked across the Senate chamber and hugged his mother.

Next morning, back in court, Stoeber made a speech for three and a half hours to the five judges. He outlined his case against the thirty-five defendants and asked the judges to find all thirty-five guilty of high treason. Each defendant, Stoeber argued, put the German army in extreme danger, and each deserved a sentence of severe punishment. Stoeber asked for the death penalty against nine of the defendants. One of the nine was Edith.

In the afternoon, the judges gave the lawyers for the defendants a chance to present a brief argument on behalf of their clients. For Edith, Sadi Kirschen returned to the point that her work with the escaping soldiers ended as soon as they crossed the border into Holland. Edith had no influence on what they did afterwards. If they returned to the fight against Germany, it was the soldiers' choice, not hers.

After the lawyers spoke, each defendant was permitted to make a short statement to the court. Edith's was the shortest of all, just a single sentence. “I have nothing to add,” she said. Edith had decided that argument wouldn't have the slightest influence on the judges. Perhaps Stoeber's demand for the death sentence ended her hope. But if Edith wouldn't speak in her own defense, Princess Marie de Croy would. She told the judges to spare Edith. “If anyone should be punished,” the princess said, when her turn came to address the tribunal, “it should be us and not her.”

When Edith and the others left the courtroom on Friday afternoon, the court hadn't arrived at its verdict. The defendants were told the decision would come sometime later. It would be brought to them in the prison.

Friday night and all day Saturday went by without word from the court. The wait tortured the thirty-five defendants. What could they expect of the future?
Years in prison? Or even the death penalty?
During the hours in her cell, Edith read passages from her Bible and
The Imitation of Christ.
Philippe Baucq composed a sonnet to his wife. Albert Libiez wrote a story for his two children. The three of them felt as calm as they could under the circumstances.

A fellow defendant named Maurice Pansaers didn't have such a strong grip on his emotions. He was the owner of a coffee shop in Brussels who had sheltered English and French soldiers. On Saturday night in the prison, he gave in to despair, thinking he would never see freedom again. Pansaers hanged himself in his cell.

Sunday came and went, and finally, on Monday afternoon a little after four o'clock, prison guards led the thirty-four remaining defendants to the building's central hall. The prosecutor, Eduard Stoeber, was waiting for them, holding the court's verdict in his hands. Surrounded by soldiers and joined by the prison's German governor and a German priest, he read the verdict to the defendants.

The court acquitted nine of them. One was poor Maurice Pansaers. The miner Désiré Richez was another of the acquitted. Convictions were registered by the court against all of the rest. Most received prison sentences. Fifteen years at hard labor for Ada Bodart. The same for Herman Capiau and Albert Libiez. Ten years for the Princess de Croy.

Five of the defendants were sentenced to the firing squad. Stoeber read their names. Philippe Baucq. Louise Thuliez. Louis Séverin. Countess Jeanne de Belleville. And Edith Cavell.

As Edith's name was read, her face flushed as if she were about to faint. But the moment of weakness passed. Another of the defendants
approached her and begged Edith to appeal to the Germans for mercy. The defendants had been told that an appeal was possible. “It is useless,” she said. “I am English, and they want my life.” Edith was right. A great hatred of England swept through Germany at the time. The Germans regarded the British as their most formidable enemy, and they expressed extreme dislike for everything and everyone connected to Britain. It would be a triumph to put to death the English Nurse Cavell.

Edith knew she was to be executed by a firing squad. What she didn't know was when. A German Lutheran pastor named Paul le Seur came to her later on Monday afternoon to tell her the day and time. The Germans had appointed le Seur to minister to all the prisoners. As le Seur entered Edith's cell, before he could get out a word, Edith asked him a direct question. “How long will they give me?”

“Unfortunately,” le Seur said, “only until the morning.” The Germans couldn't wait to execute Edith. Le Seur was saddened that his countrymen intended to put to death the woman who stood before him. He offered to be with Edith the following morning at the execution ground. Le Seur said he had never had the terrible experience of attending a death by firing squad, but he would stand by Edith at the end. Edith accepted le Seur's offer, and he left the cell.

At 8:30 that night, another clergyman came to Edith's cell. He was the Reverend Stirling Gahan, an Irishman and the only Anglican minister permitted by the Germans to carry on his ministry in Brussels during the war. He and his wife were Edith's friends. Gahan, a pious and amiable man, went to the Christmas party at the clinic when the English soldiers were in the basement. He knew about Edith's secret organization, but he took no part in it. He was too cautious for that.

His visit to Edith the night before her execution became important to
her later place in history. It was to Gahan alone that she explained what she had learned from serving her country in the way she had. Gahan made no notes during his short time with Edith, and only the two of them were in the cell. But Gahan didn't doubt his accuracy when he later quoted Edith's words about heroism and patriotism from memory. The words that were later to become famous.

Edith was in her dressing gown when a guard showed Stirling Gahan into the cell. Always the perfect hostess, even on the night before her execution, Edith shook Gahan's hand and thanked him for coming. The clergyman's purpose in visiting Edith was to give her the Anglican Communion, something only an Anglican minister could perform. But first the two talked, Edith sitting on her bed and Gahan on the cell's only chair.

Edith told Gahan that she was thankful for the ten weeks in prison. It had been a rest from what she called “all earthly distractions and diversions.” Then Edith spoke the lines about her ideas on patriotism that have been repeated in dozens of Cavell biographies and in thousands of newspaper and magazine articles about her life.

“This I would say,” Edith told Gahan, “standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.”

The words must have seemed astonishingly generous, spoken by a woman who was to die in a few hours.

“We shall always remember you as a heroine and a martyr,” Gahan said to Edith.

“Don't think of me like that,” Edith replied, again surprising Gahan. “Think of me only as a nurse who tried to do her duty.”

Gahan conducted the Communion ceremony, and together he and Edith repeated the words of the hymn “Abide with Me.” Then Gahan said it was time to let Edith get some rest.

“Yes,” she said, “I must be up at 5:00
AM.
”