Private Thomas A Pratt

Private Thomas Alfred Pratt, member of 8 Platoon, C-Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion.

Thomas Alfred Pratt was born in 1919 and enlisted into the Somerset Light Infantry on the 24 April 1939. [1]

In 1943 he volunteered for Airborne Forces, and after completing the selection process at Hardwick Hall, near Chesterfield, was put on parachute course 65, at RAF Ringway, 17 to 28 May 1943. His Parachute Instructors comments: ‘Good mixer. Leader. Hard worker.’ [2]

He was then sent as re-enforcement to the 2nd Parachute Battalion in North Africa. It is possible that he then took part in the parachute operation on Sicily in July 1943.

He would have taken part in ‘Operation Slapstick’, the invasion of Southern Italy in September 1943.

In December 1943 he, along with the rest of the 2nd Parachute Battalion, returned to England. The 2nd Battalion were based in billets in and around the Grantham area, with ‘C’ Company being at Hungerton Hall.

On Sunday, 17 September 1944 he took off in a Dakota aircraft from Saltby aerodrome, bound for DZ ‘X’ near Heelsum in Holland as part of ‘Operation Market-Garden’.

He is listed as killed in action on Sunday, 17 September 1944, near Arnhem Railway Station. This was in the attempt to fight their way through and into Arnhem itself. ‘Trying to avoid problems for the civilians as much as possible, Victor Dover [the Company Commander] decided that the three prisoners, taken outside St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, and their own wounded would be transferred to the cellar of the neighbouring house, No 18, to which Company HQ also moved. A dead soldier was carried from the road and laid under a blanket on the floor of the basement of No 16, where Mr. Rinia van Nauta found the body on Wednesday when he briefly returned to the house to collect some belongings. (Although not mentioned in any of the Company’s accounts, this body was most likely that of Private Thomas Pratt).’ [3]

He was aged 25 and has no known grave.

The son of Mr and Mrs TA Pratt, he is commemorated on the Groesbeek Memorial, panel 9.

NOTES:

[1] The Parachute Regiment, Transfer & Enlistment Book 09, page 21.

[2] Parachute Course Report. R.A.F. Ringway. June 1943.

[3] ‘The Lost Company’. By Marcel Anker. Page 65.