Monument Gabrielle Petit

Gabrielle Petit, born in Tournai on February 20, 1893, was a Belgian resistance heroine of the First World War. She and her sister were placed in an orphanage by her father after her mother passed away. When she was 16 years old, 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 in Folkstone by the British intelligence service 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 by her. Using disguises, she traveled through Belgium under the cover name Legrand (the great). 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-martial consisting of spying". On April 1, 1916, she was executed by firing squad in Schaerbeek.