The Dangerous Book of Heroes Read online

  By November, after terrible gales, they reached Constantinople. The British ambassador sent Lord Napier to greet Nightingale and he was much taken with the handsome and dedicated woman who was still exhausted from seasickness. However, she could not rest. The battle of Balaklava had been fought, and the hospital was expecting a new rush of casualties at any moment.

  The first sight of the hospital at Scutari was not impressive. Nightingale was used to dirt in hospitals, but she was not prepared to find thousands of dying men, most of whom had diarrhea. What drains existed were blocked, and the smell of the hospital reached right out to sea. Nightingale later wrote that it should have had “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” written above its gate. Her most famous work had begun.

  One of the reasons for the appalling state of the hospital was the lifeless hand of British bureaucracy. Even a request for a new shirt might be passed along to a dozen different officials, then lost or forgotten. Her foresight in buying her own supplies was rewarded. The doctors in Scutari had no medicine, dressings, or bandages. Amputation was the main treatment of wounds, and the mortality rate for such butcher’s work was incredibly high.

  Even so, her first reception was not a pleasant experience. Apart from the sounds and smells of the hospital, the doctors were hostile to the idea of a group of women interfering in their work. They gave Florence and her group of thirty-eight nurses just six small rooms, one of which had a body in it. The following morning the doctors made it clear that they would not allow women on the wards. Nightingale said nothing and put her nurses to work preparing and sorting the supplies she had brought.

  On November 5 the battle of Inkerman took place and winter came in a sudden cold blast. Thousands more wounded began to arrive at the already overcrowded hospital. The doctors were overwhelmed and asked Nightingale if she would assist. It is a testament to her character that she made nothing of the small victory, just gathered her nurses and made her first tour of the hospital. “I have seen hell,” she said later.

  She had funds, both from Sidney Herbert’s government purse and a collection organized by The Times itself from its readers. She sent to Constantinople for whatever was needed, from operating tables to soap, clothes, food, and bedpans. In the meantime, she set about cleaning the filthy rooms. Two hundred men were hired to unblock the drains. Women were engaged to scrub and scour the floors, while Nightingale set the soldiers’ wives to washing clothes and linen. She believed that a clean hospital was a healthy one, though this was not at all common practice, either in Turkey or England.

  As the hospital began to lose its worst grime, Nightingale had the nurses begin their work. At last there were medicines and dressings for the wounded. She also understood the importance of small things that the army would never have considered. She bought a screen to give privacy during operations, then held the hand of soldiers as they tried to bear amputation without anesthetic. She made a rule for her nurses that none of the soldiers should die alone. She worked as hard as anyone, staying up for twenty-four hours at a time to tend the men. She also wrote letters home for dying men who could not write.

  Despite everything, the death toll went on rising. As well as a new outbreak of cholera, the men suffered from scurvy, a disease brought on by the soldiers’ diet of biscuit and pork, without any vegetables. Even those with minor wounds were dying, and Nightingale became convinced the water supply was to blame. She set her workmen to dig up the pipes, and they discovered the dead body of a horse that had been washed into an inlet. All the water in the hospital had run past that diseased flesh. Years later, it was discovered that the Scutari hospital was built on an ancient cesspit, which meant that human waste seeped into the water supply. Florence Nightingale could never have made it completely safe without burning it down and starting again.

  Even so, little by little, Nightingale turned Scutari from hell on earth into a quiet, clean hospital. Each night she would make a last tour of the wards, in a black dress and shawl and carrying a small lamp to guide her steps. It was during his time that she became known as “the Lady with the Lamp.”

  Before she slept for a few hours, she wrote to Sidney Herbert in London, telling him everything she had done and all that still needed doing. She urged him to keep a better record of the wounded and dying, believing that statistics would aid future generations in fighting the same diseases. In this too she was ahead of her time.

  Some of her letters were passed to Queen Victoria, who was shocked by the descriptions of such suffering. The queen wrote a reply, saying: “I wish Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor noble, wounded and sick men that no one takes a warmer interest, or feels more for their suffering, or admires their courage and heroism more than their queen.” The words were read to the men and then pinned to a wall of the hospital. No previous monarch had written such a personal message to soldiers.

  By 1855, Scutari had become the best army hospital available to British troops anywhere. However, there were two others on the Crimean Peninsula, and Nightingale saw it as her duty to visit them and assess conditions. She traveled to Balaklava and found them in the sort of state she had seen on her first visit to Scutari. She began another plan of attack, but without warning, exhaustion overcame her. She fainted and was found to be burning with a fever. Her best nurses came out to tend her, but for two weeks she was close to death. Soldiers in Scutari wept when they heard of her illness.

  She recovered but had lost a great deal of her vitality and become very thin and worn. Though she was able to return to Scutari, her health was extremely fragile and she wasn’t able to go to battle with obstinate doctors as she had before. The soldiers showed their appreciation at her safe return, and that sustained her over difficult months.

  The Treaty of Paris was signed in March and came into effect a month later, ending the Crimean War. Almost without exception, it had been badly conceived and badly led. The cost in lives was cruelly high, and in England the public found little to celebrate. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Lord Tennyson became famous, but no one wrote stirring poems about hospitals.

  Gradually, the soldiers in the Crimea returned home, though Nightingale stayed until the last one had gone. As the hospital emptied, it still seemed full of ghosts. “Oh my poor men,” she wrote, “I am a bad mother to come home and leave you in Crimean graves.”

  Death was often on her mind, perhaps because of her close association with it in the Crimea. Only a year later, she gave instructions to her sister, Parthenope, that she should be buried in the Crimea—“absurd as I know it to be. For they are not there.” She would not get her wish.

  In England, many survivors described Nightingale’s kindness, and her fame as the Lady with the Lamp grew steadily. Soldiers contributed a day’s pay for her to set up a training school for nurses. Pamphlets about her time in Scutari were printed. In London, Madame Tussaud created a waxwork of Nightingale ministering to the wounded. Finally, Queen Victoria sent her a brooch that her consort Prince Albert had designed. It had the words: BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL around the edge. Huge public receptions were planned, and Nightingale’s sister and mother were in their element, overcome with the prospect of honors for the family.

  Nightingale herself was appalled at the idea. She avoided the regimental bands and crowds by traveling under the name Miss Smith. She came home alone to the house in Derbyshire and walked from the station. Her mother’s housekeeper saw her coming down the road and rushed out in tears, but otherwise it was a remarkable and modest evasion of fame.

  At home Nightingale ignored the letters and invitations that came in, telling her sister she could open them if she wished. Instead, she threw herself into work, constantly writing letters. One of her contributions to the public debate was a pamphlet, Mortality in the British Army, that presented statistical information with a modified form of pie chart. She followed it with other publications and visited Queen Victoria to put forth her case. The two women were of a similar age and mind. They worked c
losely together to create a royal commission on the health of the army, with Sidney Herbert as chairman.

  At the same time, Nightingale’s own health grew worse. She took rooms in London to work but fell ill with fevers, almost certainly the aftermath of her exposure in the Crimea. She drove herself on regardless.

  In 1858, Sidney Herbert’s health also deteriorated, crushed as he was by overwork. Nightingale was confined to her room with illness, but she was indomitable and forced him to continue his labors on the commission. At times they bickered like an old married couple, but there was great mutual respect and liking between them and Herbert’s wife, Elizabeth, encouraged the friendship.

  In 1859 another royal commission was set up to investigate the health of the army in India. Sidney Herbert was made chairman, adding immensely to his workload. Unable to refuse important tasks, he was also made minister for war by a new government.

  When the Crimean commission reported, Nightingale had the outcome she desired. It would create a new army medical school and reform medical provision down to the design of drains. Yet the conclusions had to be implemented, and the War Office was mired in tortuous bureaucracy. Even with Sidney Herbert at its head, the attempt to reform the dusty halls of power was almost impossible.

  Nightingale wrote that her aim was “to simplify procedure, to abolish divided responsibility, to define clearly the duties of each head of department and of each class of office; to hold heads responsible for their respective departments.” Those words are as insightful and valuable today as they were then and all the more remarkable for it.

  Sidney Herbert finally collapsed in 1861. As he died, he murmured: “Poor Florence. Our joint work unfinished.” His statue stands today outside the War Office in London. He need not have worried: the army reforms went ahead. Barracks were redesigned, food improved, and army nurses trained to a higher standard. Death rates dropped around the world as a direct result of Florence Nightingale’s and Sidney Herbert’s work.

  Nightingale was hit hard by the death of her friend. For the fourth time in her life, she heard a voice crying out at the loss. She worked harder if anything, despite poor health. With her duties on the commission, she had been unable to oversee the Nightingale Training School set up with pay from Crimean soldiers. As a result, standards had dropped. Though she was bedridden, Nightingale took over this last task and devoted herself to it. She was back in her element and the work made her happy. She put on weight for the first time in years, and her letters grew milder in comparison with the stern missives she had sent to those in power. The Nightingale School still exists and trains nurses today.

  Though she had expected death for years, it was slow in coming. Queen Victoria died in 1901, and her successor, Edward VII, awarded Nightingale the Order of Merit for her life’s work. She was the first woman to receive the honor. Nightingale died at last in 1910, at the age of ninety.

  It is impossible to guess how many lives were saved or how much suffering eased because of Florence Nightingale. She made nursing a professional occupation for the first time. She opened women’s medical schools and trained Linda Richards, who went on to establish nursing schools in America and Japan. She fought against the stifling attitudes and prejudices of her day, forcing new thinking in old halls of power. She won her battles, and her life stands as an example of what a single individual can do with sufficient determination, faith, and spirit.

  Recommended

  Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham-Smith

  Flight 93

  For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

  —Hosea 8:7

  On a morning flight from New York (Newark) to San Francisco, everything was normal. Captain Jason Dahl and First Officer LeRoy Homer ran through their preflight check in the cockpit. The plane, a Boeing 757, was less than half full, with only thirty-seven passengers and five flight attendants. Flight 93 had been delayed by twenty-five minutes on the ground by heavy airport traffic, but they took off at 8:42 A.M. The weather was good, and the first forty-six minutes of the flight had been completely routine.

  Four men of Middle Eastern descent sat in different rows of the first-class section, as close to the cockpit as they could get. Just before 9:28 A.M., all four took out strips of red cloth and tied them firmly around their heads.

  Copyright © 2009 by Matt Haley

  September 11, 2001, is one date that will never be forgotten. On that early morning with blue skies, four planes were hijacked in American airspace by Islamic terrorists and used as missiles against vital targets. At 8:46 A.M., American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Between five thousand and ten thousand people were in each tower. Only the early hour prevented a much worse disaster, as many thousands more were on their way to work in the towers.

  As well as the passengers of Flight 11, hundreds were killed in the North Tower as the plane slammed through steel and glass at hundreds of miles per hour. No one above the impact point survived. Below it, around seventy-two people were killed and four thousand successfully evacuated.

  As black smoke and roaring flames erupted from the impact site, media crews believed at first that they were witnessing the aftermath of a horrific accident. Even so, two F-15 fighter jets were scrambled from Cape Cod. The pilots left their afterburners on and went flat-out, breaking the speed of sound to get to New York.

  They were still minutes away at 9:03 A.M., when a second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, was deliberately piloted into the South Tower. For the first time in history, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all flights across the country to land.

  Even from the distance of almost a decade later, the shock of those images remains vivid. The Western world watched in horror as trapped men and women jumped to their deaths from windows rather than be engulfed in spreading flames. Emergency services entered both towers and saved hundreds if not thousands of lives.

  At 9:50 A.M. the South Tower suddenly collapsed, killing those left inside, including police, medics, and fire department rescuers. At 10:28, as America reeled in shock and the images were beamed around the world, the North Tower fell.

  That morning 2,749 people from all walks of life—young and old, male and female—died in the Twin Towers. Yet in the minutes before they fell, Flights 77 and 93 were still in the air and heading toward their targets.

  By the time Flights 11 and 175 hit the World Trade Center, the hijackers on Flight 93 had not yet taken over the aircraft. At 9:24 A.M., Captain Jason Dahl received an emergency warning sent to all planes in the air, telling him to beware of “cockpit intrusion” and that two planes had struck the towers. Dahl asked for the extraordinary message to be confirmed. In the first-class seats behind him, the four hijackers were tying their red cloths as bandannas, readying themselves for their appalling mission. Thus prepared, they drew box-cutter knives and took over the front section of the plane. The flight record shows that Flight 93 dropped seven hundred feet in just a few seconds as they struggled with the pilot and first officer for control.

  In panic, a passenger named Thomas Burnett called his wife. She contacted the FBI, and when he called a second time, she told him about the attacks in New York. It would be confirmed by other passengers as they called their loved ones, but it was that vital piece of information that made a difference to the outcome.

  Planes had been hijacked before and passengers had been killed, but for the individual passenger there had always been a good chance of surviving the ordeal. The hijackers’ demands would be met or not met, the plane might be stormed, casualties might occur, but the event need not be a death sentence. But almost from the first frightening moments, the passengers on Flight 93 understood that they would not survive if they did nothing. The news spread quickly among them. They knew the fate of two other morning planes roaring into downtown Manhattan.

  There are gaps in the record of Flight 93. Some of the passengers left recorded messages, but most of the information com
es from those they phoned throughout thirty-five minutes of flight. Their intent was not to leave a historical record. Many of them were simply calling to say good-bye to their husbands, their wives, their parents and children. As a result, some details will always be sketchy. We do not know how the terrorists gained access to the cockpit after the warning message had been sent, or the fate of the pilots. It seems probable that they were killed quickly, as one of the four Islamic men taking over the plane, Ziad Samir Jarrah, had trained as a pilot.

  They claimed to have a bomb and guns. They certainly had utility knives and used them to terrify the passengers and herd them to the back of the plane. Ziad Jarrah, by then in the cockpit, tried to speak directly to the passengers. He told them the plane had been hijacked and that they were to sit still. It was a vital part of the plan that the passengers be controlled through fear, and he went on to say that the demands had been met and the plane was heading back to the airport. Jarrah pressed the wrong button and made part of his announcement over open air, stunning the air-traffic controllers.

  At 9:35, as if to confirm his words, Jarrah turned the plane in a great sweep back toward the east—but not on the same track. The passengers did not know it then, but they were heading to Washington, D.C. One of the flight attendants managed to get through to a United Airlines call center and confirmed that the plane had been hijacked.

  At 9:37, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at more than five hundred miles per hour, the third catastrophic impact of the day. Everyone on board and many more in the building were killed instantly. On Flight 93, other passengers were making calls to their families. Mark Bingham called his mother; Jeremy Glick called his wife; Lauren Grandcolas her husband.

  The news of that third, terrible blow spread among the huddled group in the rear of the plane. It became clear that the hijackers were not returning to an airport. Like the three other planes, they were heading toward another target—perhaps Capitol Hill, perhaps the White House, even then being evacuated. We will never know the target with any certainty. At 9:45 Thomas Burnett called his wife again and told her that he and some others were making a plan to retake the plane.