Posted on 04/01/2021 5:44:34 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1916, German forces occupying Belgium shot Gabrielle Petit at Schaarbeek for espionage.
Petit, orphaned as a child, was a 21-year-old Brussels saleswoman and governess when the First World War began.
In 1914, she helped her wounded fiance, soldier Maurice Gobert, cross the front lines into the Netherlands to rejoin his unit.
This was already a no-no — just the thing, in fact, that would soon get British nurse Edith Cavell shot by the Hun. But Petit went way beyond into outright espionage.
Having impressed British officers upon her successful delivery of Maurice by relating everything she could remember about the German army’s disposition, she got a crash course in spycraft and returned back over the lines. For a year and a half, she continued funneling information about troop movements as well as distributing the then-underground (but today still-extant) newspaper La Libre Belgique.
Captured in February 1916, she refused to trade her life for the identity of any other operative, and was shot for spying...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
The Germans also shot a British ship captain, Charles Algernon Fryatt, who used his merchant ship to try to ram a U-Boat that was trying to sink his ship. When he was caught later in the war he was tried and executed as a “terrorist”.
That's Belgian (or Belch here in the South) for Starbucks!
The Krauts were vicious bastards in both wars when it came to this sort of thing.
I know a kraut who’s a vicious bastard.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.