15. An Influential Nurse
Edith Cavell left Belgium and returned to England to care for her father when he became seriously ill. By the time he recovered, Cavell realized that she had discovered what she wanted to do for the rest of her life: become a nurse. So in 1896, she began to train as a nurse and graduated two years later. Her early Christian upbringing instilled in her a sense of duty towards those less fortunate than herself, and that led her to apply for work in hospitals that served the poorer parts of London.
She was invited back to Brussels in 1907 to become the matron, or chief nurse, of Belgium’s first modern school for nurses. By 1910, the energetic Cavell had launched Belgium’s first nursing journal and was training nurses for three hospitals, thirteen kindergartens, and twenty-four schools. When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914 and kicked off WWI in the west, Cavell was in England, on a visit to her mother. She felt that it was her duty to return to Brussels immediately.
