Memorial Gabrielle Petit

Gabrielle Petit, born in Tournai on February 20, 1893, was a Belgian resistance hero from the First World War. She and her sister were placed in an orphanage by her father after the death of her mother. When she was 16, she left the sisters to live in Brussels. At the outbreak of the First World War, she was engaged to a soldier. When she helped her fiancé flee to the Netherlands so that he could rejoin the Belgian army on the other side of the front via England, she was recruited at Folkstone by British intelligence agency Wallinger London. In England she received a short training to prepare her for railway espionage. The German troop movements by rail were passed on to the Allies. Using disguises, she traveled through Belgium under the pseudonym Legrand (the great one). She wrote the reports on small pieces of paper that she hid in her clothes. In early 1916, she was trapped, betrayed, arrested, and sentenced to death for "treason warfare". On April 1, 1916, she was put in front of the firing squad in Schaerbeek.

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Source

• Text: Marie-Christine Vinck
• Photos: Marie-Christine Vinck