The Railway wagon in the centre of the photograph is known as the "Cavell Van". The van dates from 1919 and was built for the South Eastern and Chatham Railway at Ashford in Kent. It was the prototype of what became known as a Parcels and Miscellaneous van, but twice in 1919 and once in 1920 it transported the bodies of three people from Dover to London. Almost everyone knows the story of Nurse Edith Cavell whose statue stands in St. Martins Place just off Trafalgar Square. She was a nurse working in Brussels during the German Occupation, she was arrested in 1915 for helping allied soldiers escape to their own lines. She was subsequently tried and shot by a firing squad. At the end of the war her body was disinterred and returned to the UK for reburial. The story of Captain Charles Fryatt is less well known, in March 1915 he was the Captain of a Great Eastern Railway ship, the SS Brussels was a passenger ferry travelling from Harwich to the Hook of Holland when the German U-33 surfaced and demanded the surrender of his ship. Captain Fryatt gave the order to ram the U-boat but it crash dived and escaped. The order to treat the crews of U-boats as felons and not to treat them as prisoners of war and that if a British ship's Captain surrendered his ship he would be court martialled had been issued by Winston Churchill then First Lord of the Admiralty. Subsequently in June 1916 Captain Fryatt's ship was captured by German warships as it left the Hook of Holland and he was arrested as a Franc-tireur. He was tried in Bruges, found guilty and shot by firing squad. His body was repatriated to the UK in July 1919. The identity of the last body transported in the "Cavell Van" is not known, he was the "Unknown Warrior", a soldier who had been killed on the Western Front during WW1 and later buried in Westminster Abbey. The Van continued in service until 1991 when it was purchased by the Kent and East Sussex Railway. It was lovingly restored in 2010 to what it was in 1920 together with a replica coffin used to carry the "Unknown Warrior". The van will be on display this weekend at Tenterden Town Railway Station before being stored for the winter.

Edith Cavell - May 1919

Charles Fryatt - July 1919