Finding Harold Pringel
It’s Remembrance day 2025, and every year since 2008, I think upon this true story. I want to share it with you because it serves as a very personal 'reminder to remember'. Three generations (A Veteran, My son, and I) have been touched by this quest to reach the grave of one Canadian soldier. And only one of us made it.
Finding Harold Pringle – the only Canadian soldier to be executed in WWII
May 12, 2008
“Everybody here? Family? Friends? Lovers and other strangers?"
Ted, our host, guide, and fearless leader, has summoned us back to the bus where we’ll continue our pilgrimage, following in the footsteps of the Canadians from the beaches of Sicily to Rome. As we board, he, our driver, and translator, are huddled over a map. Yes, this is long before GPS or Siri would tell us where to go.
We’ve left the town of Ortona where, Bless’em all*, they changed the afternoon itinerary just so I could get to the Bascillica San Tommaso Aspostolo, where my imaginary friend has watched his ‘buddy’ disappear in the blast of a flame thrower. I’d written the scene over and over based on diaries, books and photographs but I still wanted to stand in the place.
And we did.
Now, our driver turns onto a new road. We’re surrounded by the Apennines with ridges and gullies alive with spring green, even poppies are blooming. I wonder what memories might be in the hearts and minds of the men who were here sixty-some years ago. Ted takes the microphone and says, “Like Laurel, Jim has a place he needs to go, and I propose we try to get him there.”
But before I go any further, let me tell you a little about Jim.
Five days earlier we’ve bussed to the actual beach (Pachino) where the Canadians landed in 1943. We’d barely come to a halt and Jim’s making his way down the aisle, shedding his clothes as he goes. The door swings open, and he is on the ground, stripped to his bathing suit and running (remarkably for 83 years old) right into the water, past his knees without stopping, arms wide. The rest of us stand on the beach, awestruck. We watch. How far is he going? We wonder. He stops – gazing out to the sea. Finally, he turns towards us and smiles, makes his way into shore as he’d done 65 years ago. “Only this time,” he says, “without shelling and machine gun fire.”
I know I would do anything for this man.
Ted hands him the mic.
“I want to go to a cemetery. I know we’ve been going to battlefields and cemeteries for days now, but this one’s different. Here’s why. In July of 1945 one of ours was executed near here…” He pauses… “by command of the Canadian Army.” The only, the ONLY execution of the 2nd world war. He rests in the Military cemetery at Caserta.”
We are shocked. And silent. Jim gazes at us.
“His name is Harold Pringle.
The kid lied about his age and enlisted when he was 16, with his father, a WWI Veteran who got turned away due to poor eyesight.
So now, the boy, without his dad to keep him in line, doesn’t take too well to the rules of engagement. He could very likely have been a little shit -- Remember that type?”
His fellow Veterans are nodding. For our benefit, he adds.
“Every unit had one. At least one. Right? With Eversharp*. We were stuck a long-time training in England… like years… And Young Harold would take off, God knows where, sewing wild oats maybe. Who knows? He was still a teenager for god’s sake. He was forever getting into trouble in his unit and after being AWOL one too many times, he was sent to a reformatory camp for a year. Supposedly. But escaped after six months. And caught. He could have been sent packing back to Canada but by now the Canadian Army was finally in the show here in Italy and instead they shipped off to join the 1st battalion where he was actually a good soldier. Actually – His combat record was unblemished.”
“But the campaign was brutal, as you know all too well and took its toll on lots of us, didn’t it? Harold, too. We had to battle the elements as well as the Germans. All this mountainous terrain, so many damn river crossings and the damn weather… either blistering hot and or freezing cold…”
I see memory ghosts on the faces of the men who’d been there.
“…and wet. Remember that? Progress was slow and bloody, morale was low and combined with exhaustion. It’s no wonder more than one fella just threw in the towel.
It seemed that the world’s attention was entirely on France while the Italian campaign, even with our ever-increasing wounded and dead, was being forgotten.
After the Hitler Line battle, Harold had enough and deserted, like so many before him, and went to Rome where he joined the Sailor Gang, smuggling goods for the black market but…”
Jim shakes his head.
“There were some famous extremely well-organized gangs -- but these guys were more like the Three Stooges, except there were five of them: Three Brits and a couple of Canadians.
They were almost always drunk and getting into fights. One night, everything went sideways in a fight over a girl, and one of the gang members grabbed a rifle from the table and shot the only other Canadian in the gang, fella by the name of ‘Lucky’ MacGillvray.”
He looked at us over his glasses. “Not his lucky day, I guess.”
Our driver maneuvers around a tight bend in the road. Jim lurches with the movement. I’d have barfed it not so mesmerized.
“Anyhow, what’s left of the gang… a quartet of drunken idiots try to get him -- probably in a stolen jeep, to a hospital. Damn, if he doesn’t die on the way! Now these buffoons are stuck with a body. Not good. So… they throw him in a ditch and Pringle and the gang leader proceed to shoot the poor bastard full of bullets, hoping to make it look like a mafia killing, before taking off like bandits. Hell bent for leather. Soon, the dead man was discovered by police and the gang members were found soon after. They were tried and court martialed and sentenced to death for murder.
Harold Pringle was the only Canadian.
He appealed the decision.
He languished for months in jail, while the Brits were executed and until the June Federal Election was over in Canada to prevent Harold’s execution from becoming an election issue.”
The driver turns down another road and says something in Italian to our translator who tells something to our host, Ted, who touches Jim on the shoulder. Jim pivots in the aisle and looks out the front window. Ted shakes his head. The bus slows to a crawl. Ted takes the microphone.
“I am so sorry. We really tried to make this happen for Jim, for all of us. And although we’re close, there’s a covered bridge ahead and it’s too low and the road is too narrow and we’re too late in the day to try to find another route. We aren’t going to make it.”
Jim turns back to us as the driver does a 5-point turn and heads back the way we came. Jim removes his glasses and rubs his eyes and his shoulders droop.
“You know I’ve served loyally in the Military my entire career. Even so, I believe with every fibre of my being that Harold’s death was a tragic miscarriage of military justice. He might have been misguided and probably not guilt-free of some of what the Sailor gang got up to, definitely guilty of desertion but he was not guilty of murder. I feel a kinship towards Harold. I know what it was to be a boy soldier.” He sighs. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”
He sits down.
We go home.
July 5, 1945
C5292 Pte Harold Pringle
My Darling Mother + Dad+ Brothers + Sisters
Well Mother Darling this is going to be an awful surprise to you all and I sure hope and pray that you don’t take it too hard. But the papers have just come back from Canada and the army has found me guilty so they say and I guess the good Lord wishes for me and I sure will pray and do everything in the world for you all.
So again, Dear Mother + Dad + Brothers + Sisters
From your Lonesome Son Harold
Goodby My Darling
With lots of Love to all
October 13, 2009 at 8:11 PM, Nicholas Mayne wrote
Dear Mum,
Feeling put back together here in Italy. I’m rising from the ashes of memories of the end of school and the end of being a little boy and I cannot wait to show the world what I’ve got. It was so important to come here, I didn’t even realize it until I got here but everything that was nagging at me fell away in Venice and I am just living so much right now, feeling so good to be me, and having learnt a great deal about loving the pain and the joy of life because they might as well be the same. They let us know we’re alive, and I want to feel all the pain and all the joy of every day the rest of my life. And I’m brave enough to do that.
And also, I’m so proud of your writing A Wake For The Dreamland, How brave, really, how brave it is to dare disturb the universe with your words. Now – I’m wondering, if there was anything left over from your battlefield tour that you need me to follow up on? I’d be happy to. Just let me know asap.
Your son,
Nicholas
I reply immediately and tell him Jim’s story of Harold Pringle, adding only what Jim told me later that night, more than a year and a half earlier, that the firing squad was made up of men who’d been taken out of battle with shell shock and most have them had not held a rifle since.
I tell him Harold is buried at the Caserta War Cemetery.
October 14, 2009, at 1:29 AM Nicholas Mayne wrote:
Dear Mum,
Oh— this is so cool. I am all over this. I am excited. This is my horoscope for today:
‘You learn something big – but not earth-shattering – late in the day, and while you need to adjust your plans, you are more than up to the challenge.’
As for adjusting plans, I am excited for it. Feels like the Divinvi Code! It looks like I can get there quite easily by train, of all things, from Ortona to Caserta.
October 14, 2009 at 5:18 PM Laurel Deedrick-Mayne wrote
Oh, fantastic! Your message gave me tears, to think you will probably actually get there. Yes, a Canadian flag or (I don't know if you there's any poppies around this time of year or a little bundle of flowers) and a maybe a little note that he is not forgotten. My friend Jim (the veteran) has started lobbying the government for a full pardon.
Sometimes I wonder why I embarked on such a long and arduous journey as writing the novel (it isn't very good) but maybe moments like this provide the answer. Can't wait to hear how you make out.
Love and good luck… Mum
19-Oct-2009
So yesterday I completed my mission. I walked the 40 minutes there and back (both ways) from the train station, in the rain, with both my packs on my back just to imagine. I stopped at a flower shop where they made up a little bouquet for and onto which I attached the note I wrote and the Canadian flag I tore off my bag. I arrived at the gate and it was locked, but I had the code and entered it and unlocked it and felt like I was in sort of story or special club. Harold Pringle is actually in plot VIII not VII as every document says. Grounds are beautifully kept.
I placed the flowers and sang the National Anthem and took a moment of silence as the rain fell all around.
The note read:
Harold Josef Pringle – You are not forgotten, and people live who wish your innocence honoured and your charge pardoned. And it is to you, soldier, son, friend and your brothers in arms that I owe the life of peace I share with my family in Canada and that many other in the world share or strive toward today. You are not forgotten. May you rest in peace.
-Nicholas Mayne
November, 2025
That 21-year-old is now married and a father.
That 49-year-old is now a full-fledged senior citizen.
Jim Ronan who dreamed of a pardon for Harold Pringle, passed away July 4, 2012
Harold Pringle still rests – unpardoned – in Caserta.
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
-excerpt from the poem, For The Fallen, by Laurence Binyon
*Bless ‘Em All, a popular song during WWII by Vera Lynn * Eversharp – a fountain pen, the slogan being “Write, with Eversharp.”
