General Donald F. Pratt
Today we honor and remember General Donald F. Pratt of the 101st Airborne Division.
Brigadier General Donald Forrester Pratt of the 101st Headquarters Company, 101st Airborne Division, was born in Brookfield, Linn County, Missouri, to Arthur L. and Mary L. (Davis) Pratt on July 12, 1892. Donald had one brother, Fabian Lee Pratt.Â
Fabian was a doctor and enlisted in the Army when the U.S. entered WWI. COL Fabian Pratt never left the Army and served as the head (and flight surgeon) of an Army hospital in Hamilton Field, California, where he died of a heart attack on December 18, 1944.Â
Don Pratt attended schools in Brookfield until 1902 when the family moved to Linneus after his father was elected for a judge position. He graduated from Linneus High School, and after attending the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin, entered the U.S. Army on August 9, 1917, with the 4th provisional Leavenworth Class. He had married his wife, Martha McLain Merriam, two years earlier at Monroe City, Missouri, on November 10, 1915.
Pratt served with the U.S. Army in the interwar period and in 1942 joined the 82nd Infantry Division at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. Not much later, he was transferred to the newly formed 101st Airborne Division. At the time, in August 1942, he was promoted from colonel to brigadier general when he became the Assistant Division Commander.
On June 6, 1944, General Don F. Pratt would lead a 52 glider assault called Mission Chicago on the morning of D-Day.
Pratt was originally scheduled to lead the seaborne element of the 101st Airborne into Normandy but persuaded General Maxwell Taylor, Commander of the 101st Airborne Division, to let him fly in by glider so he could get into battle sooner. He would have preferred parachuting in with the first airborne drop on D-Day but he was not jump-qualified, so he chose to go in by glider even though he wasn’t on a flying status.Â
Fearful for General Pratt’s safety, a member of the 72nd Troop Carrier Squadron ordered armor plating to be installed beneath the general’s jeep, as well as under the pilot and copilot seats, giving them added protection from enemy flak and ground fire. Unfortunately this overloaded glider would seal Pratt’s fate.
After the glider touched down on the ground in Normandy, it continued to slide on the slick, dew-covered pasture grass for about eight hundred feet before crashing into a hedgerow, thus killing General Pratt and the co-pilot.
There are two possible scenarios thought to have caused his death; either the violent forward motion of his head on impact with the hedgerow severed his spinal cord or his helmeted head slammed into one of the metal cross members of the glider airframe breaking his neck on impact with the hedgerow. In either case, he probably died instantly.Â
General Don F. Pratt died on D-Day morning, June 6, 1944. Another Screaming Eagle had soared to the ultimate height. 🦅
This was a sad year for his parents as they lost both their sons shortly after one another.
According to a Graves Registration Form No. 1, dated 3 July 1944, General Pratt’s body was not buried until 21.00 hours on June 8, 1944 at Hiesville. Then at 19.00 hours on July 3, 1944, his body was exhumed and reburied at Blosville, France. Pratt’s body was exhumed for the second time in 1948 and returned to the United States for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. He was formally interred there on July 26, 1948, with full military honors in Section 11, Site 707 SH. May he rest in peace.Â
Happy Birthday in Heaven, Don.
Lest we forget. 🇺🇸
Sources
Fold 3, Story Behind the Stars
The Death of General Don F. Pratt (by MAJ Leon B. Spencer)
St Louis Post Dispatch; Tuesday, June 20, 1944
St Joseph Gazette; Wednesday, June 21,1944