Edith Cavell

Cavell was matron of a nursing school in Brussels and had spent years professionalising Belgian nursing when the German army occupied the city in 1914. Her hospital treated wounded soldiers of both sides without distinction, which she regarded as the whole of her job. She also began hiding British, French and Belgian soldiers cut off behind the lines and passing them along an escape route to the neutral Netherlands; some two hundred men got out this way.

She was arrested in August 1915, held in solitary confinement, and admitted everything — she believed refusing help would have meant their deaths, and it appears she did not understand that admitting it was a capital matter. She was tried under German military law, convicted of assisting the enemy, and shot at dawn on 12 October. Neutral diplomats had pressed for a reprieve; the execution caused international outrage and doubled British recruitment for a period. The night before, she told the chaplain that patriotism is not enough, and that she must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. Her body was brought back in 1919 and buried outside Norwich Cathedral.