Sgt Alexander George Berry Pratt, MM

Alexander George Berry Pratt was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1897 with his family They settled in Toronto where Alexander enrolled on 10 January 1916, declaring his trade as a machine man. He was assigned to the 124^th Overseas Battalion, CEF and sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia on 7 August 1916.  After nearly a year in England training as infantry, the battalion was redesignated the 124^th Canadian Pioneer Battalion, CEF on 17 January 1917 and embarked for France in March 1917. ⁽¹⁾ 

Pioneers worked in conjunction with the Engineers in the Forward Area. Pioneer battalions were allocated one per division and had an established strength of over 1000 officers and men.  They were not trained as engineers and served as sources of semiskilled labour, often supervised by higher-skilled engineers, but not under engineer command. Their work included tasks consolidating positions captured by the infantry, tunnelling, mining, wiring, railroad work, deep dugout work and laying out, building and keeping trenches in good repair. In 1918, pioneer battalions were broken up with most of the personnel being sent to the newly formed engineer battalions. ⁽²⁾

The city of Valenciennes had been captured by the Germans in August 1914 and remained in their hands for the entire war. By late October 1918, as the Hundreds Days offensive was nearing its end, the Allies had broken the Hindenberg Line and the fighting had changed from near-static trench warfare to one of manoeuvre. Supporting the 1^st British Army’s advance, the Canadian Corps was assigned the task of guarding their left flank. The general plan was to swing north to surround the city, defeat the garrison and then re-join the advance.  Unfortunately, the German garrison remained in place and the areas to the north and west were flooded. General Currie, remembering Hill 70, saw that Mont Houy, south of the city on the British line of advance, provided dominating ground from which to Germans could stop or delay further movement.

The British attacked on 28 October and only gained the lower slopes. They pulled back and turned away from the area to maintain the thrust ahead.  Currie was given the additional task of taking the heights as well as the original objective of taking the city. The Canadians moved into position and opened their barrage on 1 November and the 3^rd and 4^th Divisions began to move up the slopes.  Despite using gas to push the Canadians back, the defenders were defeated before noon that day.  The advance into the city followed up with engineers working hard to establish crossings into the city to secure the many shallow bridgeheads captured by the infantry. 

On 1 November, Alexander and L/Cpl Breeze were attached to the 72^nd Battalion, CEF (Seaforth Highlanders of Canada) to deal with booby traps and like devices. During their advance, they found a bridge over one of the waterways prepared for demolition and blocking the patrol. They crawled ahead under enemy MG fire and cut the cables leading to the charges. The Highlanders dashed ahead and captured the two German sappers desperately trying to set off their charges. Both were awarded the Military Medal for their actions.

Sgt Pratt, MM was discharged on 11 July 1919 in Toronto

Notes:

1. Along with the 123^rd Battalion, the 124^th Battalion was raised in Toronto and its history is perpetuated by the Royal Regiment of Canada. Both battalions embarked for Great Britain in August 1916. The 123^rd served with the 3^rd Canadian Division on the Western Front from March 1917 until May 1918 when it was absorbed into the 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th Canadian Pioneer Battalions. The 124^th Battalion was designated the 124^th Canadian Pioneer Battalion in January 1917 and embarked for France in March of that year to support the 4^th Division.  It was later absorbed into 4 Brigade, CE.
2. As a means to address increasing manpower shortages in early 1918, the British reorganized their divisions by disbanding the fourth battalion in each brigade and using any surplus to strengthen their remaining three battalions. General Currie took a different approach. He retained the four battalion brigades and used his reinforcements to augment depleted infantry battalions by 100 men. He then created a machine-gun battalion in each division, and expanded each engineer field company (216 strong) to an engineer battalion in each brigade. The help bring the engineer battalions up to strength, each division's pioneer battalion (more than 1000 strong) was integrated into one of the field companies to form an engineer battalion in each brigade, under an engineer brigade at each division.