Reality of War 2

Nurse Edith Cavell was shot by the Germans in 1915 for helping a number of Allied prisoners to escape from German-occupied Belgium. According to Wikipedia, countless newspaper articles, pamphlets, images and books publicised her story. She became an iconic propaganda figure for military recruitment in Britian to help increase favourable AQmerican sentiment towards the Allies. Cavell was a popular icon due to her sex, her nursing profession and her apprarently heroic approach to death. Her execution was represented as an act of German barbarism and moral depravity. The many biographies that surfaced of the late Cavell, in reality, were only fictional accounts.

Yesterday, I found an envelope with some three dozen postcards concerning her death. I am posting a small number here to show the propaganda aspect and then the reality of death.

Nurse Edith Cavell is pictured with here dogs in her garden in Brussels in 1915. Thousands of Britons purchased this souvenir postcard at the time.


Cavell's grave was covered in floral tributes. The photographer has captioned the postcard with the date of her death as 12 August 1915. She actually died on 12 October.


News reports of her execution were discovered to be true only in part. The American Journal of Nursing, at the time, repeated the fictional account of Cavell's execution in which she fainted and fell due to her refusal to wear a blindfold in from of the firing squad. Supposedly, while she lay unconscious, the German commanding officer shot her dead with a revolver. A printed account on the reverse of this propaganda card records: "The fiend takes his revolver and, leaning upon his victim, deliberately blows her brains out." I leave you to guess how many patriotic Britons rushed to the recruiting office to enlist for service at the Front . . .



After the war, many troops visited her grave. Here, two American doughboys pay homage.


After the war, her remains were recovered and transported back to England for reburial in the grounds of Norwich Cathedral. Here British troops load the coffin on to a gun carriage during the removal of her body from the Tir National. The Union Flag, the wooden cross from her grave and a host of other material is preserved at the Royal London Hospital. More details of the collection can be found here

Her simple grave, pictured here, is in the grounds of Norwich Cathedral.

So, here is her grave before exhumation. The reality is quite different.

Here is the exhumed body of Rammler, a German soldier shot (without trial -the card records) at the same time as Philip Baucq (who assisted Cavell) and Miss Cavell, for refusing to fire on this nurse. His coffin was found between these two patriots.

Many of you will remember my so-called 'ability' to spot things that are often unnoticed. Probably from my picture editing days. Please note the well-preserved uniform and the buttons on his right sleeve. Take a look at Rammler's left boot. The shape of it seems to indicate that his boots are on the wrong feet. I presume this must have happened when his body was prepared for burial? Perhaps the undertaker was in a hurry?


This final image records the scene shortly after officials carried out the exhumation of Edith Cavell. Thankfully, she appears to have been buried in a shroud. It provides a grim contrast to some of the sanitised photographs published elsewhere in this post.

Recycling of Graves - Skiathos Cemetery

I have had this 'souvenir' postcard for many years and never researched it until now. It was purchased during a run ashore on a Greek island by a sailor serving on HMS Barham. The writer, Jim, simply comments: "Some Rest Camp" and dates it 1920.

An entry I found on Google this morning records a strange question by a holiday maker - "Why are there so many opened graves and no remains in the Skiathos cemetery?" The responses are illuminating. Evidently, the graves are rented for three to five years because of lack of space. At the end of this time, the remains are exhumed and either given to the relatives, stacked up in a corner of the cemetery or put in an ossuary. One respondent, perhaps too graphically, suggests three years is the time it takes a body to 'melt' in the ground . . . The custom is, I believe, common on many of the Greek Islands.

In the case of Skiathos cemetery, pictured above, the partially collapsed structure must be classed as an ossuary. As you can see the bones have rolled out into the open. What slightly shocks me is the broken wooden grave marker which must have been dumped there after a grave had been emptied.

HMS Barham was sunk in late 1941 by a German U-boat, having survived being hit by a shell fired by the French battleship Richelieu just over a year earlier. More than 800 sailors were killed when Barham capsized and exploded.

Within a short time of the sinking, the Admiralty realised that the German High Command did not know the ship had been sunk. Realizing an opportunity to mislead the Germans, and to protect British morale, the Admiralty censored all news of Barham’s sinking and the loss of 861 British seamen.

After a delay of several weeks, the War Office decided to notify the next of kin of Barham’s dead, but they added a special request for secrecy. The notification letters included a warning not to discuss the loss of the ship with anyone but close relatives, stating it was "most essential that information of the event which led to the loss of your husband's life should not find its way to the enemy until such time as it is announced officially..."

By late January 1942, the German High Command had realized Barham had been lost. The British Admiralty informed the press on 27 January 1942 and explained the rationale for withholding the news.

At a seance in Portsmouth in late November 1941, the spiritualist medium Helen Duncan announced that she had contacted a dead sailor who told her that his ship, HMS Barham, had recently been sunk. Duncan was not arrested in the aftermath of the Barham incident, but in 1944 was arrested during a seance and convicted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 and sentenced to nine months in prison.

According to Wikipedia, film of the sinking has been reused many times in documentaries and in at least one film, Earth vs the Flying Saucers (where it was shown as an American destroyer, in the film Task Force (as a Japanese carrier), and in The Battle of Okinawa film where it stands in for the Japanese Ship Yamato. A short graphic film of its capsize and the resulting explosion can be seen here: