TOPIC:

Joseph Pring

Killed in Action – Flanders, 22 May 1918

Private, 2nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment – Anglo Boer War
Sergeant, 12th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment – WWI

- Queens South Africa Medal (Cape Colony/Transvaal/South Africa 1901 & 1902) to 5673 PTE. J. PRING. MIDDLESEX REGT.
- 1915-15 Star to L-5673 SJT. J. PRING. MIDDX.R.
- British War Medal to L-5673 SJT. J. PRING. MIDD’X R.
- Victory Medal to L-5673 SJT. J. PRING. MIDD’X.R.
- Memorial Plaque to JOSEPH PRING



Joseph Pring was born in Chelsea, London on 20 October 1881 the son of William Henry Pring a Wheelwright by trade and his wife Eliza(beth), born Lester.

At the time of the 1891 census a 9 year old Joseph was at home in 118 Estcourt Road, Fulham with his parents and older sibling John (12).

Sometime thereafter Joseph must have decided to take the Queen’s Shilling and enlist with the Middlesex Regiment for service. The 1901 England census has him as a Private in the barracks of the 4th Middlesex Regiment at St Botolph (Without) Aldgate, in Whitechapel. The 4th Battalion had only been formed the year before, in 1900, in response to the need for more men to take the fight to the Boers in the Anglo Boer War in South Africa. This presented a problem for the two Middlesex Regiment Militia battalions - the Royal Elthorne Militia and the Royal East Middlesex Militia - which prior to 1900 had been the 3rd and 4th Battalions respectively. With the addition of the two new regular battalions they now became the 5th and 6th Battalions.

This war, between the two Boer Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State on the one hand and the British Empire on the other, had been raging since 11 October 1899 with no sight of an end in the immediate future.

Pring was posted to the 2nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment and, with many of his comrades, joined from England on 7 December 1901. By this time the pitched battle, conventional warfare part of the war was a thing of the past, to be replaced by a guerilla-style war where Boer Commandos, fragmented in size, would swoop down on unsuspecting and poorly guarded patrols and convoys, plundering what they could and galloping off into the distance before reinforcements could arrive. It was cat and mouse stuff at its finest and, frustratingly, pointed to the fact that the war was from over.

In reply large sweeping columns were used to “drive” the Boers into areas from which there was little chance of escape although, for the most part, that is exactly what these born horsemen did. When that strategy faltered the scorched earth policy was embarked upon where Boer homesteads and farms were raised to the ground, remaining crops and livestock slaughtered and women and children transported to concentration camps.

This too failed to break the back of Boer resistance and it was into this bubbling cauldron that a young Pring and his fellows were plunged.

The 2nd Middlesex Regiment was deployed to the south-eastern Transvaal in the main – there to guard small forts and blockhouses – until the war ended on 31 May 192. Thereafter, they embarked at Durban on January 23, 1903 for home, arriving at Southampton on February 16.

Back home once more Pring reverted to his civilian employment and was, according to the 1911 England census, a Drapery Packer boarding in the house of one Archibald Ewart at 258 Scott Ellis Gardens in Marylebone, London. At the age of 29 he was still single but this state of affairs was to be replaced by wedded bliss when, on 28 June 1913, he wed Alice Charlotte Friend Banks at St Mary’s in Battersea.



The couple had scarcely set up a home for themselves when the Great War burst onto the international stage on 4 August 1914. Pring lost no time in reporting for service and was assigned to the 12th Battalion of his old regiment, the Middlesex Regiment with the rank of Sergeant. He was posted to France and the frontline on 27 April 1915 and saw much action before his battalion was disbanded, due to manpower shortages, in February 1918. It is assumed that he then joined the 18th Battalion and it was whilst serving with them that he was Killed in Action, at the age of 36, on 22 May 1918.

He was survived by his wife, Alice of 61 Mallinson Road, Battersea, and his only child, a daughter, Mary Barbara Alice Pring (Bettison) born in 1916.

Acknowledgements:

- Ancestry & FMP for birth, census and military data
- Members of the Great War Forum for their insight and input.

Important Note: The article has been written with the assumption that L-5673 Sjt. Joseph Pring, Middlesex Regiment and G/87296 Sjt Joseph Alfred Pring, Sjt. Middlesex Regiment are the same person although records have not been located to prove this conclusively.