On October 12th, 1915 Edith Cavell stands before a firing squad. A British citizen who has been living and working as a nurse in German occupied Brussels, she has been convicted of "heinous crimes" against Germany and sentenced to death. Her crime: tending to allied soldiers and aiding in their escape from behind enemy lines.

To the Germans, she was a subversive rebel. The English would pronounce her a patriot and martyr. But Edith saw herself only as a nurse, doing nothing more than what her vocation required of her: saving the lives of her patients.

In Part 1 we will follow Edith from her tranquil childhood in the English country-side to her entering the new world of modern nursing, serving the most destitute and desperate patients in London. From her achieving her dream of becoming a head matron and running her own nursing school in Brussels, right up to the frenzied start of WWI.