Gabrielle Petit, a local 21-year-old shop assistant in Brussels was furious when Germany had occupied on 20th August 1914. She wanted to share her knowledge of the surrounding area and activities of the Germans with the British. In July 1915 she was invited by the British authorities to London’s Spy School.
Back in Brussels, she soon created her own spy network. She crossed backwards and forwards between Occupied France and Belgium carrying TOP SECRET information and she was always on the look-out for anything the Allies might find useful.
Gabrielle was arrested on 20th January 1916 and thrown into St Gilles Prison, Brussels. At every interrogation she stressed her loathing of the Germans. After a trial conducted in German, she only spoke French, and without knowing anyone influential to plead on her behalf, Gabrielle was sentenced to ‘Death by Firing Squad’
After the war, combatant nations sought to memorialise their glorious dead. In Belgium someone thought of the little Brussels shop assistant, Gabrielle would become Belgium’s martyr.
In May 1919, her body was exhumed; at an elaborate funeral the Belgian queen awarded Gabrielle the Croix de l’ Ordre de Léopold. Gabrielle’s statue still stands in Brussels’ Place St Jean. She looks down proudly on passers-by and reminds them that poor and young though she was, Gabrielle Petit had known both how to spy and how to die for her beloved Belgium
