Gabrielle Petit was a Belgian woman who had grown up in an orphanage after her father sent her there when her mother died. Her dreams of becoming a teacher were dashed as she had to work at various jobs as a nanny, laundry supervisor, waitress, etc. to support herself. She never reconciled with her father or the rest of her family and shuttled between rented bed spaces until a neighbour, Marie Collet, took her in. Gabrielle met Maurice Gobert in early 1914, a career officer in the Belgian Army who promised her marriage and a family. Sadly, World War I broke out in July 1914 and Petit joined the Red Cross. Gobert went with his regiment to Antwerp. Despite being protected by Belgian, British, and French forces, the city was besieged by the Germans on 28th September and by October, the Allies had retreated while the Germans marched deeper into the rest of Belgium. Gobert had been injured and by May 1915, he had travelled to Brussels to reunite with Petit who cared for him and his war injuries.
Gobert soon recovered and wanted to re-join the war effort and reunite with his regiment. In order to do that, both he and Petit had to make their way into the Netherlands, which at the time was still neutral. Unfortunately, the Germans had sealed off the Dutch border with the Wire of Death – a lethal electric fence to prevent saboteurs from entering Belgium and keep a valuable workforce (the Belgians) from leaving. In the meantime, Petit had made contact with the British who asked for her help to return to Belgium to spy for them. She was initially reluctant but her patriotism and hatred for Germany finally convinced her to accept it so she trained for a few weeks in London and then returned to Belgium in mid August that same year. She was to observe the border between the Belgian Hainaut region and northern France where the German 6th Army was based and report any activities back to London. After some weeks, she was emboldened by her new work and extended her surveillance work to Brussels. To relay information on troop movements, strength, and weapons back to her superiors in the Netherlands, she depended on reliable couriers – some of whom worked with the Red Cross. She got so good at it the British considered her to be among their most reliable agents in Belgium. One of her tasks was to distribute copies of the banned French newspaper The Le Patriote (The Patriot) which was fiercely anti-occupation. The Germans had banned it and it was subsequently renamed to La Libre Belgique (The Free Belgium) in 2925 and continued publishing in secret. She also helped circulate Mot du Soldat (Word of the Soldier), an underground mail service connecting families with Belgium soldiers who fought for the Allies. It was also the only reliable Belgian publication of the time which Petit assisted with. She also helped other soldiers escape to the Netherlands.
In February 1916 she was betrayed and arrested, together with another female agent. Despite interrogation, she refused to break and took every opportunity to tell the Germans just how much she hated them. Petit’s trial began on 2nd March and she was sentenced to death the following day. Her execution was delayed by a day by the execution of another woman, a Red Cross nurse named Edith Cavell who was caught helping Allied servicemen escape German-occupied Belgium. Her execution in October 1915 had caused an international outcry and boosted the number of British men who enlisted in the military and had caused the German government to hesitate about executing Petit. They had offered her amnesty in exchange for the names of other spies she had been working with or knew and she refused. Her execution was finally scheduled on 1st April 1916 and as Petit was marched to the Tir National execution field in Schaerbeek, she refused to to take the hand a soldier had offered to her nor did she accept a blindfold and defiantly declared:-
“I do not need your assistance. You are going to see that a young Belgian woman knows how to die.”
Gabrielle Petit had died at the young age of 23 for her country but most of her countrymen knew nothing about her until the end of the war when the royal family held a state funeral for her in May 1919. In her hometown of Tournai, they named a square after her – a permanent home for an unwanted half-orphan.
No comments:
Post a Comment