674. The First World War: The Spy Who Took on the Germans (Part 4)

Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day-gum v-grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mavily! This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's, which has been backing British ambition for over 250 years. Now, when you think about it, every dynasty in history has boiled down to two important elements - aspiration and action. And a classic example of this from British history, the rise of the House of Wessex, the family of Alfred the Great and his heirs, who between them established the United Kingdom of England. Yeah, it's great story, isn't it, Tom? But great lesson in leadership, I think for anybody. So Alfred and his heirs, they marry idealism and pragmatism, they're brilliant at alliances, they're brilliant at managing power, they're brilliant at course at managing their money, which is a key part of political leadership, and of course we are all reaping the rewards of their wisdom and foresight. But it's time to make your next move, you can bank on Lloyd's to be ready when you are. Because from new businesses to new homes and new life chapters, backed by generations of hope and ambition, you can see, Tom, why 14 million people trust Lloyd's to help make their dreams a reality. Heist on Lloyd's internal customer data from March 2026. It's the first gravedown with a heavy heart. I got into the motorcar and drove out to the prison. I sent in my name to Miss Cavill. If I remember rightly, the soldier told me she had just been kneeling at her table. In the cell, a flickering gas flame was burning. Two large bouquets of visit flowers, which had been standing there for ten weeks, awakened the impression of a vault. So condemned lady had packed all her little property, this greatest care in a handbag. I accompanied her through the long corridors of the Great Prism. The Belgian prison officials stood there and greeted her silently with the highest respect. She returned there greeting silently. And we boarded the motorcar which awaited us in the yard and I sat beside Edith Cavill in order to accompany her to her own burial. So that was the German Pastor Paul La Sœur, who was chaplain at the Great Prism of Sangeel in Brussels. In that passage, he is recalling the last hours of a British nurse called Edith Cavill, who was about to be executed by a German firing squad for war treason on the 12th of October 1915. And if you're wondering how a British nurse can be executed by the Germans for treason, however we will be coming to that. And Dominic, you think that her life and death is one of the most moving stories of the entire First World War. And you were just saying how you wish that you had had the chance to talk about it with her. She would be high on your list of dinner party guests. Because it is an amazing story, isn't it? It's a story of spying and resistance and of courage and treachery and of patriotism and faith. And she's such a fascinating character that it would make a really brilliant film, you'd say. That's not right, Tom. No, I was actually saying something very different about. I think I like a funster at a dinner party. And I don't think Edith Cavill was, I don't think she was one of life's funsters, but a remarkable person. She was a remarkable person. It is a truly remarkable story that we'll be talking about today. So as you say, it's one of the most colourful and controversial stories that the whole First World War. Let's say here that she's probably the war's single-best known casualty after Franz Ferdinand. Well, if you think about people who were killed in the First World War, especially people who were killed while not fighting, which is true, both the Franz Ferdinand and of Edith Cavill, there aren't that many who have statues. Edith Cavill does, of course, have a statue. She has a statue of Trafalgar Square. And every day, I guess, every year, hundreds of thousands of people must walk past that statue. They probably barely give it a second's thought. Or they walk past the statue of her in King's Domain in Melbourne, in Australia. Or they walk along one of the countless true Edith Cavill in France or in Belgium. Or the schools and hospitals that are named after her, you know, all over the world in Australia, New Zealand, in Canada, in the United States, and here in Britain. And there was a monument to her in Paris, which no longer stands for reasons that we will be coming to in due course. Yes. But she became, I think, the great martyr of the First World War. Perhaps she's not as well known now as she used to be, but the story behind her martyrdom is an interesting one because it's a story, as we said, of espionage and secret machinations. And it's a complicated story. And let's get into it. We'll start with the place where it all happens, and that is Plucky Little Belgium. So people who listen to our first series about the Great War may recall that at the beginning of the war, Belgium resisted the German demands for free passage in August 1914, but within weeks, Belgium was absolutely steamrollered. These extraordinary scenes of the kind of grey ranks, like a tide, like a kind of tide of tutonic militarism, pouring through the streets of Brussels. Just say that. A tide of tutonic militarism. I did. But you know me, Tom. I do. I said it in a proving way. A tidal wave of tutonic militarism. I love a tidal wave of tutonic, I love a peak helmet. So the Germans occupied Belgium. They executed infamously about 6,500 civilians in their reprisals against suspected bartersans. And they burned the medieval core of the city of Lever. Library, which I know you were very shocked by, as somebody who loves libraries. So even before today's story begins, people in Britain and in neutral countries and the United States and so on, are primed to see Belgium as a place where tutonic barbarians in these kind of spiked helmets are carrying out dreadful atrocities against innocent women. So already there are British posters that sort of say, "Remember Belgium", and the image of Belgium as a sort of maiden being violated by slavering huns. Yeah, it's kind of a gorilla, isn't it, with a club holding a. Like almost that King Kong. Completely. Yeah. Holding a maiden in its arms. Yeah, exactly. So by the end of 1914, almost all of Belgium is under a military occupation. It's been divided into three occupation zones, and the largest of these, which includes Brussels, it's called a general government, anticipating what's going to happen to Poland and the Second World War. And here you have a German general, and he leads a German-dominated administration. And it's actually a pretty heavy-handed occupation. So Belgium had been the world's sixth biggest economy before the war, so much for plucky little Belgium. The Germans dismantled the Belgian economy. They basically moved loads of machinery and equipment to Germany, and they deport more than 100,000 Belgian workers to German war factories. They even demand that the Belgians shift their time zone, so by an hour, from GMT to central European time. And for ordinary Belgians, these are grim years, the years of occupation. It's maybe not like being occupied by Nazi Germany, but there's a sense of national humiliation, there's an economic collapse, there are massive food shortages. One way that Belgians deal with this, when Belgium is a very Catholic country, it's how they define themselves against their neighbours in their Netherlands. And there's a sort of revival of Catholicism, which actually plays a part in today's story. And the other way they respond, of course, is by resistance. And we should be coming to this exactly how the Belgians resist. The resistance is where today's heroine, either the Caval, comes in. And she, I have to say, is a very, very unlikely Belgian resistance hero. So she's a Victorian born in 1865 in a village outside Norwich called Swardiston. And her father was the vicar there, he was called Frederick Caval. He was the vicar there for almost half a century. He was like Nelson's dad. Yes. Except he's more formidable. Nelson's dad was a little bit mild mannered and easygoing, a bit wet, wasn't he? This bloke's not wet at all, he's a sort of terrifying Victorian with massive sideburns. I mean, an indication of what kind of man her father is. When her father was training to become a person, he fell in love with his housekeeper's daughter, who was called Louise, and he wanted to marry her. But he said to her, "I will only marry you when you've educated yourself to an appropriate level for a person's wife." And depending, you know, some people may say that's unromantic of him. Others may applaud his high standards, I lead that to the listeners to decide. But anyway, this bloke gets living in Norfolk, and that's where Edith is born, where she grows up. It's obviously a austere kind of existence. So they had servants, and one anecdote we have about the servants, is that are made want scrawled and pencil on the wall of her atty. bedroom. The pay is small, the food is bad. I wonder why I don't go mad, which doesn't say much. For the jollity and generosity of the Caval family, basically we don't really know anything about Edith when she's growing up. I mean, the accounts that you find, she liked dogs, she liked ice skating, she liked flowers, but this is so generic. This is so sort of generic saintly Victorian child that I don't think you can extrapolate much from it. She's educated at home first, and she goes to a series of boarding schools. Her big thing at boarding school apparently was French, she has a great gift for French, and her school in Peter where they do no fewer than 10 whole minutes of French conversation every day. Unbelievable. I mean, people say that the British don't bother learning foreign languages, total fluency. Yeah, she's tremendous linguist. She's not learning Flemish though. This is not exactly no. So she works as a governess, and then in 1890 she is recommended for post-embrassals where she goes off to work for the Forswa family. And what is she like? Now you said at the beginning that she might be a fun person, just always go to dinner party. I'm not so sure. So the accounts that you have of her as a young woman, she's very short. I mean, that's not a reason to not talk to her at dinner party, but she's not at one of life's funsters and japesters. So a training nurse who's met her later said her voice was low agreeable and cultured. Her French fluent, which is done 10 minutes a day, everything around her, the neatness of her attire, her attitude and poise, the words she use, all conveyed her characteristic efficiency, thoroughness, serenity and kindness. They're not attributes that I look for in a conversation list, frankly, but anyway, and it's best. Obviously, she has this very, very sort of Christian sensibility. She wrote to her cousin, "Someday I'm going to do something useful, something for people. They're most of them so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy." I mean, you bring her alive. You bring her alive, and I frankly, however short she is, I would relish the chance to spend an evening listening to her talk about flour ranting. I think there's just a trace in her conversation of the Grantham Grocer's shop, no? Of the Grantham Grandma School girl who's going to lecture you about God's plans for you. Anyway, in the 1890s, she comes home from Brussels and she ends up training as a nurse and she rises to become the assistant matron of a hospital in Shoreditch in 1903. Now, on the issue of her as a dinner party companion, I mean, I didn't think this would be such a theme with the episode, but there we are. She's very good at running this hospital, but she's not a bundle of laughs. So these are the reports of her from the late 1890s and 1900s. A very strict person who demands obedience from others, orderly, methodical and of kindly and gentle disposition, unbelievably unselfish with an almost fanatical sense of duty, rather withdrawn, uninterested in superficial friendships, but thoughtful, pleasant and sympathetic to all her patients. So that take your box, is Tom? Yeah, but anyway, in 1907, she has recruited to go back to Belgium. Now, she'd been working remembered as a governess for the François family. And they have a family friend called Dr. Antoine Depage. How familiar are you Tom with the history of Belgian nursing? Pretty familiar. I mean, everyone obviously has heard of Dr. Antoine Depage. He's a name that trips off the tongue when discussing the history of Belgian nursing. I mean, if you want to go deeper into the weeds, then yeah, there may be knots, but Dr. Antoine Depage, I know all about him doing a bonus, surely. Well, Dr. Antoine Depage, he's the Belgian royal surgeon, isn't he? And he's also he's founder of the Belgian Red Cross, and also he was co-founder of the Belgian Boy Scouts. And Dominic, here's an amazing fact about him, which of course you will know, but probably this and as who know the outline of his life may not be aware of this, his daughter Marie died on the New Statenia. Probably everyone does know that, but just for the few who don't know anything about him, is an interesting fact. And also, isn't it the case that he's very keen to set up Belgium's first nursing school on the outskirts of Brussels, because up until this point, nursing has been largely controlled by Catholic nuns. Yeah. Dr. Antoine Depage thinks that nuns are backward and useless, and so he wants to bring Edith Carville in as a patron and director. So, Dominic, what about Edith? How does she come in? Dr. Depage says to come and set up this nursing school. She says brilliant. Can't wait. She goes over to Belgium. She goes to Brussels. She sets up Belgium's first ever professional nursing journal. Did you know that? And she's so interesting, Dominic, isn't she, that she gets the second job as matron of the big new secular hospital at Saint-Sangeil. It's mad that some people say she's not interesting. Doesn't get more interesting than that. And then in 1914, she goes back in the summer, doesn't she, to Norfolk, to visit her elderly mother, who's now a widow? So, that's sad. The father's dead. She goes back to Norfolk and approach his heartland. And the story goes that she is weeding her mother's garden in College Road, Norwich, when she hears the news of the German invasion of Belgium. So, if there was a film, this is the point at which a small child kicking a ball says, "Have you heard?" German is a raided Belgium. She's like, "What?" And her mum says to her, "Don't go back Edith." And Edith says, "My duty is with my nurses. At a time like this, I am more needed than ever." Now, as this might suggest, we are very dependent for all this, on incredibly, treatly, hagiographies that were written after her death. So, whether this really happened and whether she really said this, you know, listless, can draw their own conclusions. Anyway. But why otherwise would she have gone back? I mean, it seems plausible to me. Maybe she wants to set up another nursing journal in Belgium, might become the major number third hospital? I don't know. Not with a tidal wave of grey-prussian militarism descending on her. Right, a tidal wave of tutonic militarism. Exactly. Anyway, by the third of August, she's gone back to Brussels. She sends the German nurses that she's got home. She says, "You can go home." She says to the other nurses, "Your task is to care for any soldiers regardless of their nationality. Any wounded soldier must be treated, friend or foe. Every man is a father, husband or son. As nurses, you must take no part of the quarrel. Our work is for humanity. The profession of nursing there is no frontiers." So, the 20th of August, she's been back for two weeks and Brussels falls. And, you know, the German tidal wave tramps into the city. And Edith writes in her journal, "We were divided between pity for those poor fellows far from their country and their people." She's talking about the Germans there. She went to Germans, suffering the weirdness and fatigue given arduous campaign. This is my kind of talk. "And hate of a vindictive foe bringing ruin and desolation on hundreds of happy homes and to a prosperous and peaceful land." Now, by this point, her training school and the sort of clinic have been converted into a Red Cross hospital and all English nurses have now been sent home. But Edith stays on with her assistant who's called Miss Wilkins. "I would have a corrective assuming that Miss Wilkins is English as well." Exactly, she is. I imagine her as having steel-rimmed spectacles. "Prosney." So, then a few weeks later comes the moment that changes her life. "Yeah, of course. This is where Dr. Depart comes back." So, he's the guy who first brought her to Belgium. "Yes." And he has his daughter Marie, doesn't he? "I remember what happens to Marie? What happened to Marie?" "Oh, she ends up on the Lusitania but before she gets on the Lusitania she comes to see Edith and says that a friend has come to ask her for help with two British soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Bodger and Sergeant Major Frank Meachin." "It's Dudley Bogey." No? "Sure." "No, all these years have been reading about this and I thought it was Bodger." So, these two guys were both in the Chashes and they're both fought in the Battle of Mons. Remember they were Angels and Mons? Tom the Arches who saved the British. So, they were both badly wounded in the British retreat from Mons. They were captured and they were taken to a temporary German hospital in a nearby convent, German military hospital. Now, both of them incredibly managed to escape from the Germans in the night and they hid in a village where Belgian families took them in and now they need Edith's help. Basically, because they're still injured and they need to get out of Belgium and she says, "Yes, she will, she will help them." This is when Marie has come to ask her, "Will she do it in principle?" And then on the evening of the 1st of November, 1914, a guide brings these two blokes to Edith's clinic, which is a Rue du Convent in Brussels. And Bogey, or Bodger, as you call him, is dressed as a factory worker and he's wearing what I read is a floppy Belgian black beret, so he looks very abstaining and he's grown a beard to disguise himself, no Britain, no British soldier would ever have a beard at this point. And he's wounded, so he'd been hit in the hand and the thigh and the foot, so he needs medical help. And Meachin is dressed as a Belgian labourer, but he's also disguised himself as a hunchback. He's wearing like a cowardly hunch. That is always the mark of a bad actor, isn't it? Someone who just goes at a little bit too far, puts on a limp, develops a hunchback. Yeah, I patch, surely. An I patch. But the rationale for this is that he's a man of fighting age, so if the German say to him, "Why are you not in the army?" he can gesture at his hunch, and that will be the reason. So Edith takes these two blokes in, she keeps them hidden in the clinic, and she personally tends to their wounds. And then after seven days, the Belgian guide returns to collect them, and they're going to be passed from one person to another to escort them towards the frontier with the neutral Netherlands, so Holland, from where they will be able to escape back to Britain. Now Colonel Bojo or Bojo didn't make it. He could barely walk, unfortunately, because he'd been wounded in the thigh and the foot, and he was captured on the outskirts of Brussels when the Germans discovered that he was carrying a false passport. But this boat, Meachin, previously disguised as a hunchback, has now disguised himself as a fish hawker. So a man who sells fish, fish, whistle, whistle. It's an easy part to play. Yeah, I mean, yeah. And I suppose if you smell very fire, yeah, horrible, violent, near fish, people won't approach you. See, he got to Holland, he went home, he came back to France, and he ended up wearing a medal in 1917. So that was nice. So this is the beginning of Edith Caval's connections with the Belgian resistance. Now, I mentioned, we mentioned the occupation. The Belgian resistance is not one big organized group. I mean, this isn't the case with all resistance groups, really. It's basically about 300 different kind of interlocking groups that attract both men and women. They're very informal, you kind of come and go. And they do some sabotage acts, but by and large, what the Belgian resistance large you do is they distribute underground newspapers and pamphlets, and they get intelligence on what the Germans are up to. So German troop movements, and they send it across the border to the Allies. And the other thing, of course, they do, which these two bloats have just been the beneficiaries of, they smuggle Allied soldiers to safety, because there's a lot of Allied soldiers that have been left behind enemy lines during the chaotic retreat at the end of 1914. And so through her friend Marie de Parge, the daughter of Topbelge and Dr. Antoine de Parge, Edith is now connected to one of these resistance groups, and this is a resistance group that has very aristocratic leanings, because it has centered on Prince Reginal de Croix and his sister Princess Marie, and the house of Croix, a kind of Belgian aristocratic house, dates back, I read to Medieval Burgundy, are they members of the Golden Feast? I don't think they are, because they're not that posh. They're not that posh, but quite posh. And during the fighting at the Battle of Mons, the Croix family had used their shadow at Béligny, which is not that far from Mons, they turned it into a hospital for wounded Allied soldiers, and they are now using their shadow to hide Allied soldiers and to send them on to neutral Holland. So the way it works is this, basically if you have a British and you've been hiding in someone's pig style or something, because you were left behind during the retreat from Mons. Belgians will take you to the shadow and introduce you to the Prince and Princess, and they will give you forged papers. I mean, how they are forging these papers, I do not know, whether the Prince Reginald has kind of got a machine in his hand cranking a passport machine or something. Anyway, they'll give you your forged papers and then they'll introduce you to a series of guides to take you to the Dutch frontier. And the bloke is in charge of organising the guides, is an architect and Catholic social activist called Philippe Book. And Book is like a big resistance figure, because he also distributes two underground papers, La Libre Belgique and Le Maud du soldat. And there's about 200 people in this network. They say they have safe houses and there are people who are going to, you know, I'll take you from here to here, then I'll pass you on to this person, all of this. And it's very informal. A lot of them are actually just rich posh Belgians who've got big houses so they can hide you in, you know, in one of their many bedrooms or something. And there's a slight sense, I think, about this of sort of rich people having having fun, having a little bit of an adventure. Sure, I should smuggle some some British and French soldiers to save to you all of this. But I mean, you do risk being shot, don't you, if you're found out by the Germans. It's sort of on the one hand, you risk being shot. On the other hand, it's a bit of a lark. So their password, for example, is York, which is Y-O-R-C, which is quite backwards, which doesn't seem to me like the, it's a bit enablyton in terms of passwords. I suppose it's the beginning of the war, so, you know, yeah, they're having fun. So Edith's role in this is too far. I think one medical, so they bring soldiers to training school in Brussels, where she looks after them. And two, the clinic itself becomes an important safehouse, so a link in the chain in the Belgian capital. Now, there probably also is an espionage dimension to all this. It's impossible to say with any certainty. She's a woman of mystery. Yeah, but probably some of the men who are coming through her clinic are carrying intelligence for the Allies. We don't know really how formalized this was, or whether this is just very informal. But anyway, in total, between November 1914, July 1915, Edith is thought to have helped about 60 British and 15 French soldiers. So these are people who've been left behind in their retreat, but she's also thought to have helped about 100 young Frenchman or young Belgians who want to get to Holland because they want to join the war on the Allied side. So they can't go west, as it were, so they go the long way around by going east to Holland, then to Britain, then back to France because they're desperate to fight. And to give you just one example of the people she saved, this is on, there's an Edith cover website, and this is where I discovered this story. I recommend it to people, just Google it. And this is a bloke called Billy MAPES, who was a private and came from a village outside Norwich. So Ediths, like the woods? Yeah, this neck, the woods. He fought in the first battalion in the Norfolk regiment. He was wounded in the British retreat. He was cut off, like these other blokes captured by the Germans, taken to a Red Cross Convent, escapes. He sheltered us in the home of the family called the Camus family, like the Liturgy, no relation, no relation. At one point the Germans actually searched the house of this family, looking for British soldiers, but they didn't find them. The family put him in touch with this Princeton Princess De Quas. They smuggled him to Brussels, with his still marriage in the ankle, but he makes his way to Ediths clinic. She recognized his Norfolk accent straight away, so loads of Norfolk bands, which was great. She knew his village, she'd been to his village, that was lovely. She nursed him back to fitness and then she organised for him to escape to the Dutch border, with six other men. Their first attempt to cross the border was a disaster. It turned out the Germans had reinforced the border with electric wires and increased patrols. Now that tells you something that the Germans are kind of on towards happening, and we'll come back to this. But they made a second successful attempt to escape. They got across and they got back to England. This bloke mapes, he'd been listed by the army as missing presumed dead, and his local vicar in his Norfolk village had offered to organise memorial service for him, and his mother had said no, I won't give up hope. And when he walked down the street into the village, everybody started crying because they were so moved to see him back from the dead. And when he was interviewed later, he had a Hollywood instinct, this bloke, because he said that before he left, Edith Cavill made a point of kissing him on the cheek and saying to him, her final words were, "Dear old Norfolk, I do anything to help a Norfolk man." Okay, and hold on, so he's reporting this in a local newspaper in Norfolk. Yeah, but years later. Oh, okay, so not at the time. Well, we should come to this because at the time some of the people that escape do give interviews to their local newspapers, or they're by and large, they are quite circumspect about exactly how they got out, but we'll come back to this point because it's an important one. So, as early as the spring of 1915, so just within months of really starting this operation, things are starting to go wrong, and the process to quire is worried that the network has been compromised. Now, part of this is because you mentioned giving interviews, part of this is because of this issue about people giving interviews when they get home to the kind of, you know, I don't know, the non-eaten bugle or something, to say, "I hid in somebody in a barrel in the Belgian family's place, then I went to a safe house, then I've kindly nurs helped me, and then I got home." So, the Germans can, you know, it's not like the Germans can't reach. There are many English nurses working in Brussels. Some of the people actually write postcards to Edith the Fanker. So, that way Billy makes gave an interview to an East Ang be a newspaper. He didn't mention her, he didn't mention the nursing school, but it was kind of obvious that somebody must have helped him. And the press, the prince de quoi, actually sent a message to the British and said, "Could you please stop this appearing in your newspapers?" Because this is very dodgy for us if this keeps appearing. Sometime around May 1915, Princess Marie actually goes to Brussels to see Edith and to say, "I'm worried that the Germans are going to find out." And Edith was very alarmed and said, "You shouldn't have come." Like, you know, this is too public. And the princess said, "We should think about shutting the operation down." But then she mentioned almost casually, there are 30 more men in the Compré area, and Edith said, "Oh, we must save these men. If one of them were caught and shot, it would be our fault." And then one day, not long after that, a new fugitive arrives at her clinic. And his name is Georges Gaston Quill. And he says to her, "I'm a French officer. When the French captured my hometown," which says, "Saconte, I went into hiding, and I need money, and I need help to get to the Dutch border." I needed this slightly puzzled by this story, because Quill, unlike most of the fugitives, says to her, "Can I have 300 francs? I need 300 francs." Now, it's not clear to her why he needs this, because if he is who he says he is, then when he gets to Holland, he can go to the French consulate and they'll give him loads of money. But anyway, she gives him the money. And the other thing that's weird is that he doesn't seem in a hurry to leave. So, when she says, "I've got you a guide to take you to the Dutch frontier," he says, "I'm not really ready yet." I'd like to wait a few days longer, and he's kind of watching her the whole time as though he's observing everything. Anyway, after about two weeks, he says, "Okay, I'm ready to go now." The truth is, of course, he's learned everything he needs, and he is a spy. He is, in fact, not a French officer. He was a convicted criminal who was in prison when the Germans captured his hometown, Sag Conta. He was short of money, and he basically offered his services to the Germans as an informant, and in this hometown, he befriended a girl called Jean-Balligant, and she was connected to the Quann network. And he sold her this story, John, about being a French officer, and she fell for it. Incredibly, she took him to the castle of the Princeton Princess, and they gave him false papers, and then he was passed on to a school teacher, and then she took him to Brussels, and she took him to Edith's clinic. So Edith has now fallen for his story as well. She helped him to get to Holland. He goes to Holland. He goes to the French Consulate. They give him yet more money. He's rolling, and he's got another 500 francs. But once he's got this money, he goes straight back across the border, all the way back to Brussels, to report to his German handlers. And so two days later, on the 31st of July, 1915, the Germans spring into action. First, they raid the house of this architect bloke who runs the network, Philippe Book, and they arrest him, and they arrest this school teacher who'd been helping him. It was called Louise Toulier. And when they search Book's house, they find a list of names, and one of the names is Edith Cavall. On the 4th of August, the Germans raid the nursing school. And Edith is very calm. She's hidden her journal inside a cushion, and she's destroyed any incriminating papers, and she and Miss Wilkins managed to keep the Germans talking. While the British soldier they've gone in the clinic escapes out through the garden, the Germans go away, but the next day, the 5th of August, the Germans come back. And this time they come into the clinic, they look around, but when they leave, they take Edith with them. Not Miss Wilkins. Not Miss Wilkins. Edith is under arrest. She is charged with war treason, and war treason is a crime punishable by death. Oh my goodness. Well, let's find out what happens after the break. Hello, it's Marina Hyde from the rest's entertainment. Now, Tom, it's fair to say there isn't normally a huge amount of crossover between our podcasts. Well, Marina, I know that we have both on our respective podcasts discussed Vin Diesel's ambition to play Hannibal. So I've always thought that perhaps there is potential here for the rest of history and the rest of his entertainment to combine and produce something beautiful. Yes, in a crossover, nobody saw coming. The worlds of reality TV and historical high society collide live on the South Bank Center stage. Yeah, the real housewives of Regency England will see us cast a TV reality show I onto the women of the early 19th century. And when we say the women of the early 19th century, we are talking about some of the most extraordinary, most charismatic, most scandalous women in the whole of British history. Exactly. I think Lady Hamilton, Jane Austen and my chaotic queen, Caroline Lam. Yes. So Marina and I are planning to pull out all the stops for a reality TV tour of Regency London, complete with superb dramatic recreations and unbelievably exciting, a special celebrity guest from the world of the real, real housewives. The rest is Fest is running from the 4th to 6th of September at London South Bank Center. Members of the rest is history and the rest is entertainment can get tickets on the 28th of May. General sale goes live on the 2nd of June at 10am, visit southbankcenter.co.uk to find out more. Holden, the Russians accountable is world war. They took down a British passenger jerk containing 350 people. Men in the Kremlin is playing Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You are the prime minister. If done, not me. We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an Operation Order or Frago. Frago that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Gaulhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you Sergeant Tupper Duffy? An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. Divised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action forever. We're Britain plays its strongest arm against its strongest foe. Bear hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back to the rest of history. It is August 1915 and the Germans have finally moved against the network of the Prince and Princess Dukwa. These very posh Belgians, although Dominic is your anxious to make clear that they're not Uber posh. They're quite posh. I mean, they're pretty posh enough. So the Prince himself, he escapes to Holland, doesn't he? But his sister, the Princess Dukwa and some of the other key figures in their network, they get rounded up and among them, as you described just before the break, is our heroine Edith. Yes. And so she is taken to the prison at Saint-Gilles, and she's held in this prison for the next 10 weeks. And for much of that time, she's in solitary confinement. And she's interrogated three times on the 8th, 18th and 22nd of August, and she gives statements to the Germans. And there's a slight complexity here. Edith was interrogated in French, which she was very good at remember, because she'd done 10 minutes a day at school in Peterborough. But her answers were then translated into German. And the sobography of her by Diana Suhami, and Diana Suhami says, she thinks that the answers were slightly mistranslated to make them sound more incriminating. So she thinks, though, when Caval was asked about her motivation, she said that she was saving injured men from death, if I hadn't saved them, they would have been shot. But the German translation made it sound as though she was motivated by eagerness to help the Allies, which is a slightly different thing, and that's a subtle difference, and that of course can mean the difference between life and death. I mean, you could be motivated by both, I think, and I think she probably is, but there's an ambiguity that runs through this story. Anyway, the important thing is she doesn't make any effort to deny what she's been doing. And in fact, the figures that I quoted earlier for the number of men that she helped to smuggle to safety, they come from her own testimony. She says to the Germans, I've helped almost 200 men, some of them soldiers, some of them civilians. And her biographies and people have written about this case have often wondered why she was so candid. So one explanation is obviously that she's a pious Victorian Christian, and she can't tell her lie. It's not in her repertoire to be dishonest. There's also people who think she's just naive. She doesn't realize the gravity of her situation. And then there are also people who say, well, the Germans told her that the other suspects had already confessed, and she was gullible, and she fell for it. And so she thought, what if the others have confessed, I might as well confess myself? I think there is definitely an unworldliness to her. I don't think she quite realizes the severity of the situation. Or do you think perhaps she does, and she is, I mean, prepared to accept a form of martyrdom? We would need to know more about her in her life to get a sense of that. I mean, that's obviously a possibility that she willingly embraces martyrdom and sacrifices herself almost deliberately. But that can only be supposition because we know so little about what's going on behind the sort of, you know, behind the slightly prim nursing facade. I mean, she's clearly an unbelievably brave woman. Yeah. And very, very serious and earnest. So she describes her time in prison, for example, as a solemn fast from earthly distractions. If you're the kind of person who says that about your time in the German prison, then you're not a very, I suspect you're not a very worldly person. Or you're a person who is steeped in the narratives of Christian martyrs. Because that's exactly how they talk, you know, in the early martyrologies. Of course. And I think she is. Only she's gripping a vicarage. She is a nurse. Absolutely. She's part of all that. I feel that she, you know, she is aware of the script in a situation like this. Yeah. Quite possibly. Quite possibly. I still don't think this makes her a brilliant dinner party campaign. You and I may differ on this. After 10 weeks in prison, she's taken out on the 2nd of October to face the charges. Now, this is not an ordinary court. It is a court marshal. And it's a court marshal because she's being charged with war treason and the section 58 of the German military code. And this reads as follows that in time of war, anyone who would intentionally. of aiding a hostile power or out of causing harmed German troops. Anyone who commits one of a series of named crimes shall be punished with death for war treason. So even if she's English, even if she's English, the code is absolutely explicit about this, that this applies to anybody in the war zone or in the occupation zone. And her specific offense is conveying troops to the enemy. Now later, you see it a lot in accounts of the trial, sort of popular accounts and things. It is described as a show trial. It absolutely was not a show trial. So she has a defense lawyer. Miss Wilkins chose a lawyer for her who they knew and the Germans said no, that person's not right, that's just a mate of yours. So Miss Wilkins is fine. She's off the whole. Yeah, Miss Wilkins is fine. But the Germans found her replacement who was a Brussels lawyer called Sadie Kirschon. And there's no suggestion that this defense lawyer let her down or, you know, was inadequate or anything like this. Well, it's tricky, isn't it, because she's confessed everything. She doesn't deny the charges. So this is a report by a Belgian official. In her oral statement before the court, Miss Caval disclosed almost all the facts of the whole prosecution. She was questioned in German and interpreted translating all the questions in French, with which language Miss Caval was well acquainted. She spoke without trembling and showed a clear mind. Often she added some greater precision to her previous depositions. When she was asked why she helped these soldiers to go to England, she replied that she thought that if she had not done so, they would have been shot by the Germans and that therefore she thought she only did her duty to her country in saving their lives. But I think it's here that the issue of translation is so damaging, because the Germans say, well, hold on, are you doing this to save their lives or are you doing this to do your duty to your country? There's two slightly different things. Are you helping your country? Always this just about pure humanitarianism. Right. Because she's saving Beltans as well, isn't she, and getting them out to go and join the Allies? Yes. So the military prosecutor said, but you haven't just helped injured soldiers. You have also helped young Belgians who were not in danger at all, but wanted to get out of the country to join the Allied armies. You're not saving their lives. You're actually, you know, aiding and abetting them to take up arms against us, against the Germans. And because of that point, it's very hard for them actually to pardon her. I know this sounds like a massively team chewed on again. The German military code, Tom, is very clear. I don't know how familiar you are with that. They're only, they're only obeying orders. Well, the penalty for her crime, right, in the code is death. And section, you asked about her being foreign. I don't know how familiar you are with section 160 of the German military code, but this explicitly says that in time of war, the penalties will apply to foreigners as well as to German nationals. Now, you might not want to take this unwelcome news from me, but surely you would take it from Sir Horace Rowland of the foreign office. Because Sir Horace Rowland, as we know now from the classified files, wrote about this day's colleagues and said, she's in a mess and was nothing we can do to save her. I am afraid it is likely to go hard with Miss Cavill. I am afraid we are powerless. Now, he's right. Because, you know, given the legal framework, conviction is a foregone conclusion, and a couple of days later, on the afternoon of Monday 11th of October, the sentences are handed down. So nine people are found guilty. Four of them are sentenced to hard labor. Five of them are condemned to death, and the people who are condemned to death are Edith Cavill, this bloke balk, the architect, the school teacher, Tullier, who was helping him and two other people. I mean, the princess gets off, doesn't she? She gets off exactly. And she then pops up in the Second World War doing exactly the same thing. She's a very impressive woman. She can't get enough of it. Tullier, the school teacher and two of the others are given reprieves, but Philip Book and Edith Cavill are seen as the worst defenders. Edith, because she has confessed and made such a sort of, she's made no secret about what she's done. And she's unrepentant. And as a result of this, she is sentenced to death by firing squad. And the German military commander in Brussels, who has the excellent name, General Traogort von Saubertsweig, he says, "I want the sentence carried out straight away, because otherwise there's going to be a massive hell of a loot." Like, come on, we're not going to have a massive fath and a back and forth about this. Let's just get this done." So that very night, he led in the October, the German Lutheran chaplain of the prison, who's called Paul La Ser, who you quoted at the beginning, he comes to see Edith and he says to her, "You're going to be shot at dawn." And he describes it, "For one moment her cheeks were flushed and a moist film passed over her eyes, but only for a few seconds. I offered her my services as a pastor, and I stated that I was at her disposal. They are the day and night, but she declined it politely, but definitely." And then this bloke, La Ser, says to her, "Can I not offer you some kindness? Please do not see me now the German, but only the servant of our Lord and Savior, who places himself entirely at your disposal." And she says, "Well, okay, fine. Could you get word of what's happened to my mother? My mother is 80, and she's back in Norwich, and I don't want my mom to hear about this in the newspapers." And he says, "I will." And actually, he says in his account, "I kept my promise. I don't know how they must have sent a message somehow to the British telegram or something." Yeah, exactly. And then he makes a pretty big offer to her, I think. He says, "I know that you're very pious and you're a big Christian, and I know you'll want to take communion before you die, but I know you also will find it difficult. If it's coming from, and this is from his account, a German in the uniform which she doubtless hated." And he says, "I know the Anglican Chaplin in Brussels, who you also know, is a guy called Reverend Sterling Gahan, and I'll bring him to your cell." And he says, "Her eyes lighted up, and with great joy she accepted." I mean, I've got to say, everyone is behaving very well. Exactly. And this bloke, the Reverend Sterling Gahan, he arrives later that evening. He already knew her, the German authoritative said, "Fine, you know, you can come." He finds this very, very emotional. To my astonishment from relief, I found my friend perfectly calm and resigned, but this could not lessen the tenderness and intensity of feeling on either part. And she says to this bloke, "Please tell all my friends that I willingly gave my life for my country. I have seen death so often it's not strange or fearful to me." And there's some very famous lines, which end up being on their statue. They have all been very kind to me here, but this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. And then they pray, they take communion together, and they talk quietly until the guards tell him, "It's time to go." He says later, "I said goodbye," and she smiled and said, "We shall meet again." And then when he's gone, she writes a farewell letter to her nurses, very moving letter, actually. When better days come, our work will again grow and resume all its power for doing good. I told you that devotion would bring you true happiness, and that the thought that before God, you've done your duty well and with a good heart will sustain you in the hard moments of life and in the face of death. I may have been strict, but I have loved you more than you can know." Now overnight, while she's doing all this, there is a chance of a lifeline, and this comes from the Americans. People who listen to the last episode will recall that despite the sinking of the Lucertainy, the Americans have still not entered the war, and the Germans are keen not to antagonise them. And the US ambassador in Brussels, of course he has a US ambassador's name. He is called "brand Whitlock." As "brand Whitlock" sends the German Governor General a note asking him for mercy, and he says, "Her career, Miss Cavals' career as a servant of humanity, is such as to inspire the greatest sympathy and to call for pardon." And "brand Whitlock," he's actually ill that evening. He can't be bothered to go himself, so he sends a delegation from the US Embassy, and it eats some Spaniards, who are also neutral. And they go to see the Governor. And at the head of this is a diplomat called Hugh Gibson, American diplomat, and he says, "We reminded him of the burning of Louvert and of the sinking of the Lucertainy, and we told him this is the German Governor, that this murder would rank with those two affairs and would stir all civilised countries with horror and disgust." And one day a podcast series will do them in succession. Exactly as we did. And at that, one of the German officials, he's called Count Harak, interrupts, and he says, "Hold on, hold on, I would rather see Miss Cavals shot than see any harm come to the humblest German soldier. My only regret is that we don't have three or four more old English women to shoot." Well, they've got Miss Wilkins. Why aren't they shooting Miss Wilkins? Yeah, she's the one that got away, no? I mean, the Americans were really shocked by this. So this book Gibson went back and wrote it down and said, "What's his terrible form from the Germans?" Is it a joke? I think it's obviously a joke. It's German banter. Yeah, very vulgar and quick. It's a vulgar banter. Plus, the Germans have been woken up at like one in the morning by this group of people who aren't even in the war. I think this place just like, come on, leave us alone. We're just not following orders. They're just following the German military code. Oh yeah, I'd like that to be very clear. Yeah. So now we come to the early hours of the 12th of October. And there were different accounts of what happened, but the most reliable is from that Lutheran pastor Paul the Sir is very evocative. And that scene that you described. So he goes to the prison. She's She's been nearly at her table, she's tall, she's been nearly impressed. and he goes into the cell and she's packed up all her stuff and there's just a little sort of flame burning gas flame and she's got ready. The two of them go out of the cell and they walk through the silent corridors of the prison, the scene that you described at the beginning. The Belgian prison guards have all lined up to sort of wish her well and as Lesser says, they greet her silently with the highest respect. They get into a car and then the Catholic chaplain comes out of the prison with Philippe Book and he gets into a car. He also behaves spenderly. Philippe Bookie says to all the German sentiors in Dutch, he says, "Let us bear no grudge" and then he gets into the car and they drive off and they drive to the TN National Shooting Range, which is where the Germans usually hold their executions and there a company of 250 German soldiers is lined up waiting for them. They present arms, edith and this architect book are led to the front and the sentences are read out in French and German. Book cries out at this point. He says, "Come raids in the presence of death, we are all come raids." And then someone says, "Pipe down, you know, stop talking." Lesser, the Lutheran, is allowed a last word with edith and he sort of presses her hand and he says to her in English, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you forever." Amen. And she says, "Ask Mr. Gahan to tell my loved ones later that my soul as I believe is safe and that I'm glad to die for my country." And then she's led to the pole, she's loosely tied to this pole, a bandage is put over her eyes, which the sir says, "As the soldier who put it on told me, were full of tears." And then a few seconds passed which appeared to me like eternity. Immediately the sharp commands were given two salvoes crashed at the same time, each of eight men had a distance of six paces and the two condemned persons sank to the ground without a sound. Now that makes it sound as though it's all very clean and very clinical, but actually that's not the case. The sir goes on to say, "My eyes were fixed exclusively on Miss Cavill and what they now saw was terrible. With a face streaming with blood, one shot had gone through her forehead. Miss Cavill had sunk down forwards, but three times she raised herself up without a sound with her hands stretched upwards. And he runs forward with a doctor. And the doctor says to him, "Don't worry, these are just the sort of last automatic reflexes before death." And then she does die. And the sir said, "The bullet holes as large as a fist in the back proved without any doubt that she was killed immediately. I only mentioned this fact because untrue rumors have been connected with it. We will come back to these rumors. So keep these rumors in your heads." Then a few minutes later he says, "The coffins were lowered into the graves and I prayed over Edith Cavill's grave and I invoked the Lord's blessing over her poor corpse. Then I went home almost sick in my soul." So this is just one death or two deaths if you include the architect against the backdrop of a war in which thousands of people are dying every month from the Western and Eastern fronts. But it becomes a massive story on both sides of the Atlantic because Edith Cavill has turned immediately into a martyr into an innocent victim of German barbarism. So to quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is very enthusiastically pouring out propaganda for the British government at this point, "Everybody must feel disgusted at the barbarous actions of the German soldiery in murdering this great and glorious specimen of womanhood." The New York Herald, the official report received today will cause a wave of horror to sweep over the world, at the thought of the possibility of a nation which will perpetrate such a terrible thing succeeding in this war and dominating Europe. And basically the new newspaper goes on to say, "You know, the thought of the Germans winning must be complete anathema to any democratic American having read this story." And the funny thing of course is that nobody up to this point has ever heard of Edith Cavill. It's not like she's a celebrity or something, but in the way that works brilliantly because it means that she's a blank slate and people can project onto her. This sort of idealized portrait of a kind of Christian womanhood. She's a nurse. So her kind of white wheat uniform and the red cross on it and perfect. Exactly. So the British war propaganda bureau, which was operating to spread the word in America, takes her story and it puts it alongside the Belgian atrocities and the Lucitania in the sort of chamber of horrors of German crimes. And the newspapers, both in America and in Britain, print ever more lurid accounts of her final moments. So this is what Nassau was talking about when he said about untrue rumours. So there were stories that German soldiers refused to fire on her, and that the officers had to do it. Or the most common story that she'd fainted before the firing squad. And then an officer stood over her with his revolver pressed against her head and basically blew her brains out. I mean, this is not true, but it becomes again, a little bit like the stories that we talked about last time about German school children being given the day off to celebrate the sake of the Lucitania. It becomes a widely accepted urban legend. And you can find, you know, you can see them online. Loads of examples of posters and postcards about the execution of Edith Cavill. They always show her an inertious uniform, which she would not have worn at the execution marked with a big red cross. It does seem like the Lucitania in that you can see the military justification for it, if that is your perspective, but it just seems insane to have done it. Of course, insensitive. Well, it's not just insensitive. I mean, it's it's worse than a crime, it's a mistake. Yeah, I think that's fair. You know, you were shooting a nurse. It's just mad. Yeah, it's mad. I mean, one thing they, one last thing about the propaganda, interestingly, the pictures always show her as young. Yeah, and she's what, 49 or something. Exactly. So they always show her as young, maidenly, beautiful, you know, and the fact that she was unknown meant to see see to do that. But also it's feeding into all those images that we were talking about earlier of the kind of simian hum holding the kind of the maiden who has fainted and is dressed in flowing white robes. I mean, it's tapping into all of that. But just on your thing about it being a mistake, Tom, there is a counterargument to that. And this is as follows. The German position at the time is this person is very, very clearly guilty. There's no question of that. And she confessed. And their argument is this, we have issued a lot of public proclamations telling people that to help enemy soldiers escape is a crime punishable by death. She knew this. And one of the things that actually really condemned her was in court. They said to her, did you know this? Now, if she'd been sensible, she would have said, I didn't actually know that it was a crime punishable by death. And because some people did say that and they got off. She said, yeah, I knew that perfectly well, but I did it anyway. And at that point, they'll like, oh, come on. Now, the issue about her being a woman, right? Because this is the main thing, the fact that she's a woman, it's not even the fact that she's a nurse, the fact that she's a woman. I think the fact that she's a nurse is massive. Of course, I know that, but the Germans debated this internally. We know that they debated this. Should we let her off because she's a woman? And their argument was, well, no, our legal code makes no distinction between men and women. That's not how the law works. So this is a guy, Alfred Zimmerman, not the Zimmerman from the Zimmerman Telegram, but another Zimmerman who was the undersecretary for an affairs and he was briefing the press. He said, it was a pity that Miss Cavill had to be executed, but it was necessary. She was judged justly. It's undoubtedly a terrible thing that a woman has been executed, but consider what would happen to a state, particularly in war, if it left crimes aimed at the safety of its armies to go unpunished because they were committed by women. Yeah, I understand that, but I still think that you have to weigh. If you're in the German high command, you have to weigh up, which is the worst, and I think you could send it a prison, whatever. Yeah, I agree. I'm in deep down. I agree with you, of course. It's a deep error, I think. It's a political mistake, rather than a moral mistake, I would say. And it kind of reinforces the possibility that she knew what she was doing and she was consciously maturing herself quite possibly. I mean, all through the 20th century, the perception of her and Britain was as a sort of saintly martyr, but actually in the last, I don't know, 30, 40 years, the perception has slightly begun to change. So in 2015, Stella Remington, who used to run MI5, did a documentary on Radio 4, looking at the, they went into the Belgian archives, and it looks as though some of the fugitives that she was helping were carrying information about trench systems and munitions dumps and things like this. Whether she knew about that is unclear, but there was definitely an espionage dimension to the story which is still very murky, it doesn't undermine her courage or anything like that, but perhaps it slightly strengthens the case that the Germans, you know, didn't have that much choice. And the other interesting thing I always think about it is that her, you know, that what's written on the statue, patriotism is not enough. This implies that she is a Christian heroine whose story kind of transcends the war and the rivalry between nations. But actually her last words to pull the sir, I'm glad to die for my country. There's a slight tension there, I think. I don't think she would have necessarily recognized the tension herself, of course, because she would have thought that a Christian Christian duty and her country were the same thing, because God was on Britain's side. But I think there is a slight, not contradiction, exactly. On the one hand, she says patriotism is not enough, but on the other hand, she's doing this for Britain. So, which is it? You know, you're doing it for the world or for Britain? Well, I suppose she would say, "I love my country, but I have no hard feeling against the country that's going to. " It's like the beginning when she sees the Germans, and she says, "Oh, how sad that they're very tired, but equally, they are invaders." She was a tremendous cacast, no? I mean, that would be an unsympathetic way of framing her. Never. I'm never unsympathetic. Anyway, what happened to her? So, she was buried at the prison initially under a plain wooden cross, but in 1919, when the war was over, her body was brought back to Britain, a great honour, and they had a memorial service at Westminster Abbey for her, attended by Queen Alexandra and lots of big wigs, and then she was reinterred at Norwich Cathedral. And in 1920, the statue, which you can see today, went up just off Trafalgar Square, with the message, "Patrotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone." Very similar message on the memorial, unveiled in Melbourne, Australia, six years later, and then you have all of these hospitals and schools and streets all over the world. And actually, I think there's a case that she's more famous in Belgium and even France than in Britain. So, I don't know whether you followed Tom, the competition in 2005, Le Ploucôme Belge, the greatest Belgians. So this was a big public vote in Belgium to decide the greatest ever Belgians in history. Did you follow this? Who won? I think it was some form of none. Not King Leopold. Do you know, he actually did quite well. I think he is. Would you be allowed to have a gun in painter or something? Okay. I thought I had a massive rabbit hole here, it's bizarrely interesting. So they held different versions of the program in different languages, French and Flemish. So the bloke who won in the German speaking and Flemish speaking bits of Belgium was a guy called Father Damien, who's some form of missionary, Victorian missionary, loads of people that I don't recognise at all. But one of them is Edith Caval. Edith Caval, she came 48th. It's not bad considering she's not Belgian. I mean, she did well. She came ahead of the tennis player Kim Clistus. She came ahead of Bregel. Well, I mean, it's an instance of our insularity in Britain, isn't it, that in the hundred greatest Britain, so we didn't have a Belgian? Ocupeiro, no. Do we not have Ocupeiro? No, I don't think we did. So I said that she's very famous in Belgium and what about France? Well, she's actually incredibly famous in France, but in an indirect way. So two months after she was shot, on the 19th of December, 1915, a baby girl was born at the opital tunnel in Paris. And this girl's father was a circus performer and her mother was a cabaret singer and kind of performer as well. And they had clearly been reading about the Edith Caval case in the French newspapers. I mean, it was a big story in France. Because even though the name Edith was, at that point, pretty unknown in France, these two people chose it for their baby. And their baby's full name was Edith Giovanna Gassion. But Tom, we know her better by her stage name, Edith Piaf. Can I just mention one other instance of her celebrity in France, which I think is fascinating, because it also demonstrates the consciousness that the Germans had of the damage that her story had done to Germany's reputation. And this relates to Hitler's visit to Paris in the wake of the fall of France in 1940. And he's a tourist, he goes to the Eiffel Tower and Napoleon's tomb and all of that. But he specifically orders the destruction of two monuments. And one is to a general who had fought against the Germans in the First World War by the name of Charlemagne. And he had occupied the Rhineland in 1918. And among the troops under his command had been Senegalese soldiers, so black soldiers. And the story was among Germans that he had licensed these soldiers to rape German women. And had said that basically German women weren't good enough for his black soldiers. And the statue to him in Paris showed him with a kind of a guard of honor formed up of Senegalese soldiers. So you could see why Hitler would want that destroyed because it's a French statue celebrating French aggression as Hitler would see it against Germany, occupying the Rhineland. There's the sense of the injustice of Versailles that he's there as in the wake of the armistice. And also Hitler is obviously obsessed by the whole notion of miscegenation. So he's an obvious baddie and so Hitler duly orders it to be destroyed and it's blown up. And the other statue that he orders destroyed is of Edith Carvell. And clearly her story is as offensive to him as the war record of this French general. And it's a kind of amazing demonstration of how haunted by this story, in the wake of the First World War, even Nazis were. They wanted to erase all memory of it. So interesting. It's so interesting. Well, anyway, if you want to go and commune with her spirit, you can go to the statue in London or indeed in Melbourne, I suppose, or go to one of the streets named after her, or I suppose indirectly you could listen to a song by Edith P.F. But next week we will be going east. We will be turning our attention to the Ottoman Empire, to the Straits of Constantinople and to one of the greatest military disasters of modern history. And this is a story with a really tremendous cast. So you've got Winston Churchill, you've got Clement Attlee, you've got Mustafa Kemmel Ataturk and we welcome onto the show thousands upon thousands of Australians and New Zealanders. It's great to have the ANZACs, as people know that said at the time, in the streets of Istanbul, because this is the long awaited story of the Allied Attempt to seize Gallipoli. Thank you Dominic, and listen to the Rested History Club, of course, can hear both of them right now and to hear them and to get the full range of benefits that come with this sensational offer of membership, go to therestedhistory.com. Thank you Dominic, over everyone. See you soon. Au revoir.