Click for Site DirectoryMary Pratt Crushed by Barrage Balloon 1942
a balloon crew in Wakefield Yorkshire. The balloon was being hauled down but had decided to misbehave and
began to yaw. Her attention was diverted to the winch driver to whom she was shouting commands, but it was
too late. Suddenly she felt a massive blow to her head and collapsed onto the ground. The crew rushed to help
her. She had been struck on the head by the balloon as it literally fell out of the sky. Mary got up very slowly
and sensed that there was something not quite right with her neck. She crossed her arms over her chest and
placed her hands either side of her cheekbones and held them as stiffly as she could. She was taken to hospital
and an X-ray revealed she had broken four cervical vertebrae. They had been compressed by the weight of the
balloon on her head. She was rushed to Pinderfield Emergency Hospital, Wakefield for Specialist Treatment.
Treatment involved being encased in a plaster cast from her head to her hips to take stress off her neck.
This resulted in her being given the name “Queen Bess” because the cast looked like some form of rigid ruff, from
Elizabethan days. Her parents rushed from her home in Pershore to see her on the ward at Wakefield. They felt quite
despondent at seeing their daughter laid up in a hospital bed but on their second visit in August she was reported
to be doing well. Mary was given a series of rehabilitation exercises and an X-ray on 15th August showed that all
four vertebrae had healed and at the end of September, after sixteen weeks, she was declared fit
to leave hospital and rest at home. She recuperated at home and the R.A.F. reassessed her and were considering
invaliding her out of the service but Mary told them that was not a wise idea. She told them: ” If I don’t go back
people will think balloon work is dangerous and will not join the service”. She continued to serve throughout the war.
Before the war she was in domestic service in Pershore and joined up in September 1941.
Peter
Garwood 2021