Why was edith cavell a hero

Edith Cavell was, and still is, a hero to many people. She did save lives and she did sacrifice her life for others. She helped others before herself and she is now looked up to and admired for all that she has done for all of those soldiers in Belgium. She is my hero because I hope to someday be a nurse and be able to save lives too.

A hero is a person who does something great or saves someone from harm, is courageous and thinks of others. Edith Cavell was a hero because she helped others and didn't worry about what was going to happen to her.

She took in people she didn't even know to protect their lives. She was taken into police custody and was charged with helping Belgians escape to England. It was said that she hid them in her house and provided them with money and an address. Edith Cavell was an English nurse. There she treated casualties from both sides, caring for German and Austrian soldiers without prejudice. Soon she began helping in other ways, too. Cavell and her comrades started smuggling Allied soldiers out of German-occupied Belgium, saving men in a single year.

In August , her work was discovered by the Germans, who tried her for treason and placed her in solitary confinement. The international pressure to release Cavell was enormous, but on 12 October she confessed and was executed by firing squad. This ruthless punishment sparked outrage worldwide and she was hailed a martyr. Her death was leveraged as propaganda to drive conscription — something Cavell strongly objected to.

Sewn into the clothes of the soldiers she saved were secret messages that passed vital intelligence to the Allies. The answer was none of them. After nine months of diligently harbouring wounded and separated soldiers, she was arrested, tried without legal representation, and executed by the Germans for treason in October She had no idea she would end up in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful wars in history and, many would argue, her execution was the turning point in getting the Americans to join the Allies.

In , I made my first visit to England to research her story. I first went to her statue off Trafalgar Square. It was the first of many trips to England and Belgium to gain enough information to write my book.

I was honored and thrilled to be there. This year I was invited not only to Norwich, but also to London to join them in their annual ceremony on the date of her death, October She was often used as a propaganda figure for military recruitment in Britain, mainly to help increase favourable sentiment towards the Allies in the United States.

She became the most prominent British female casualty of the First World War. In , the funds raised by two national newspapers in memory of Cavell were dedicated to the creation of at least 6 rest homes for nurses around England. Many nurses had suffered in the war and needed time to recover and long-term care.

The Cavell family had suggested this as Cavell herself had mentioned she would like to provide this kind of care when she retired. Today this work is still going on under the Cavell Nurses Trust. This is one of many memorials in the form of statues, monuments, and plaques in Britain and beyond created to honour the life and work of Cavell.

She has also been immortalised in books, music, television, and film over the decades. The story of Cavell, a tale of martyrdom and heroism undercut by sorrow is an important one not just because it illustrates the destructive nature of war, but rather it demonstrates the selfless nature of Cavell and her ability to see soldiers and civilians from neighbouring countries as human beings worth saving.