Gabrielle Petit (1893-1916)

DOSSIER:
Gabrielle Alina Eugenia Maria Petit was born on 20 Feb 1893 in Tournai, Hainaut, Belgium. She was executed by a German firing squad on 1 Apr 1916 at Schaerbeek.

CODE NAMES:
Several

At the outbreak of WWI, she was living in Brussels as a saleswoman. She immediatly volunteered to serve with the Belgian Red Cross.

Gabrielle's espionage activities began in 1914, when she helped her wounded soldier fiancé, Maurice Gobert, cross the border to the Netherlands to reunite with his regiment. She passed along to British Intelligence information about the Imperial German army acquired during the trip. The British soon hired her, gave her brief training, and sent her to spy on the enemy. She proceeded to collect information about enemy troop movements using a number of false identities. She was also an active distributor of the clandestine newspaper La Libre Belgique and assisted the underground mail service "Mot du Soldat". She helped several more young men across the Dutch border.

She was betrayed by a German who represented himself as Dutch and was arrested by the German military in February 1916. She was imprisoned at the Prison de St. Gilles (a suburb of Brussels), tried, and convicted for espionage, with the death sentence imposed on the following March 1. 

During her trial, she refused to reveal the identities of her fellow agents, despite offers of amnesty. Among such agents, Germaine Gabrielle Anna Scaron*, daughter of a local magistrate and and close friend of Mlle. Petit, was arrested with her on similar charges, imprisoned but spared and, despite the opposition of German military, released later for lack of sufficient evidence, which Gabrielle could have divulged but heroically kept secret.

On 1 Apr 1916, Gabrielle was, at the insistence of German military, shot by a firing squad at the Tir national execution field in Schaerbeek. Her body was buried on the grounds there.

Her story remained unknown until after the war, when she began to be seen as a martyr for the nation. In May 1919 a state funeral was held for her, attended by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, Cardinal Mercier of Brussels and Prime Minister Léon Delacroix, after which her remains (and those of fellow agents A. Bodson and A. Smekens) were buried with full military honors at Schaerbeek Cemetery.
 

*Scaron was but one of Gabrielle's many acquaintances gathered during the two years of her active life as a British spy and Belgian heroine.