Usually, Military Monday covers men’s activities and resources. Today it’s about a woman from my home county in England and a Canadian who died when her ship was torpedoed. A little problem — one was a nurse but not military, and her death was 12 October. The other died on 10 October. Between the two, on average, that’s today.
According to Wikipedia “Edith Louisa Cavell was a British nurse (from Swardeston in Norfolk), She is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from both sides without discrimination and for helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during the First World War, for which she was arrested. She was accused of treason, found guilty by a court-martial and sentenced to death. Despite international pressure for mercy, she was shot by a German firing squad 12 October 1915. Her execution received worldwide condemnation and extensive press coverage.
Born in Galway, Ireland, according to the LAC Discover blog “NS Henrietta Mellett from London, Ontario, died at sea during the sinking of RMS Leinster, on October 10, 1918, when she was returning from leave to service with 15th Canadian General Hospital. An experienced military nurse, she had already served with the Red Cross in France, Egypt and England. She perished with more than 500 other passengers, when the Leinster was torpedoed by the German submarine UB-123 in the Irish Sea.”
I am from Jamaica and attended an all-girls high school, St. Andrew’s High School for Girls, from 1944 to 1953. It was very much on the British pattern. We had houses to encourage competition and cooperation in sports and studies. The four houses were named after well-known women — Joan of Arc, Grace Darling (a lighthouse keeper’s daughter who saved sailors from a shipwreck), Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (first woman doctor in England), and Edith Cavell. I was in Cavell House.