World War II: A Four Year Party
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WORLD WAR TWO A FOUR YEAR PARTY FOR CPL NORM PRINGLE
As told to: Hobart K. Kistler, Sept. 2010 – (69 years later)
By: Norm “Crash” Pringle
A native of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Mr. Pringle was born there on December 9, 1923. “I flunked out of the first grade of high school,” he says, “and the chance to get a job was rare. Well, my dad had been in World War I, and he always said I’d be in the next one to come around.”
With the Dominion of Canada involved in the Second World War since 1939, Mr. Pringle was well aware that there was a war on. American ‘bush pilots’, eager to get in on the fighting, were a common sight at airfields along the Canadian border; many Canadian men had already joined up as well. As such, in the summer of 1941, Mr. Pringle determined to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. “It was more to get paid and get three squares a day than out of patriotism,” he remarks of his decision to enlist.
Mr. Pringle was first ordered to report to #2 Manning Depot, Winnipeg, Manitoba. The 1,000-mile journey from Alberta was quite an adventure for a seventeen-year-old who had never strayed far from home. For a week, “they sorted things out,” Mr. Pringle remembers. “It was basic training in a sense, but nothing really serious. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was just getting underway, and they needed people to man the training facilities. Since I had no established trade, they asked me if I knew how to work with Railroad Time. I said ‘yes’, and so they made me a dispatcher.”
Mr. Pringle was assigned to duty at #7 Bombing and Gunnery School, at Paulson, Manitoba. The airfield serviced about 25 aircraft which were used by pilots and airmen to acquire the skills necessary for combat. “A plane would be sent up, flying a sort of drogue 600 yards behind, and the practicing gunners tried to shoot that target.” Mr. Pringle’s work involved mainly “assigning the pilots and gunners to planes, and getting the necessary signatures to see that the towing had been serviced. It was a big responsibility for a kid without a high school diploma.” He remained at #7 for nearly three years, facilitating the training of numerous pilots and gunners, perhaps half of whom were Americans. “It was all very much like the motion picture Captains of the Clouds,” he observes. (The movie referenced was a 1942 film starring James Cagney as a middle aged ‘bush pilot’ training at a BCATP base.)
“It was a good assignment,” Mr. Pringle says of his time at #7. “We didn’t have much to do, except go into this little town (Dauphin) and go to dances and get drunk. The men often sang songs, such as the British servicemen’s favorite, Bless ‘Em All, into which Mr. Pringle admits he and his cohorts often substituted a more colorful verb for ‘bless’! The chorus went:
Bless 'em all, bless 'em all
The long and the short and the tall
Bless all the sergeants and W.O. Ones
Bless all the corp'rals and their blinking sons
For we're saying good-bye to them all
As back to their billets they crawl
You'll get no promotion this side of the ocean
So cheer up my lads Bless 'em all!
One day an aviator accidentally walked into a spinning propeller directly in front of Mr. Pringle’s office. The man was killed instantly, reminding the men that although not on the front lines, no one was guaranteed to come out of the war alive. For Mr. Pringle, another accident nearly cost him his life.
“We had a kid with appendicitis who needed to be flown down to Winnipeg for surgery,” he relates. “Since I had to dispatch the plane, I thought, ‘I’ll take a ride myself.’ In the end there were about seven or eight people jammed into that little Cessna; it was a terrible day, snowing very hard.” Things didn’t really start to go sour until the plane was in transit to Winnipeg. Mr. Pringle remembers exactly what transpired that day: “The pilot lost his way; he couldn’t find the airport in all that snow. To make matters worse, we were running out of gas just flying around in circles trying to find the airport. Finally, he saw it, but as we were getting ready to land, the engine conked out. The pilot said, ‘Hang on boys; we’re gonna make a rough landing!’. We crashed on a roadway near the airport, and the plane ended up upside down. We got out of the wreck ran like hell to get away before the fuel caught on fire and it exploded. Just then, we realized that the patient, who had been the only one wearing a seatbelt, was still in the plane. We ran back and found him hanging upside down inside. When we unhooked him he fell to the bottom of the plane, and we got him out. Amazingly, no one was hurt except one guy who had gotten the hook on his parachute jammed into his head; it was bleeding all over, bud he didn’t die. Fortunately the ground crew from the airport had seen us go down, and they were there to help us.” Resultant from his surviving the wreck, Mr. Pringle was given the nickname ‘Crash’ Pringle, an appellation that has stuck with him for over 65 years.
Mr. Pringle returned to duty at #7 for a time, before being ordered to “a secret new radar station being established at Spring Cove on Vancouver Island. It was in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t even know what radar was, but I thought it was rather like going on a vacation to the seashore!
“I don’t know why they sent me, a dispatcher, to a base with no planes,” he continues, “and they wouldn’t tell us anything about the radar, so I had to get creative to find a job for myself. The base had no PX (Post Exchange) or even anything where the 100 guys there could buy cokes or cigarettes, so I started a canteen. I sold beer, cigarettes, coke—whatever they wanted, and since I knew how to run a 16mm movie projector, I made up a little theater and showed one movie a week.
“There wasn’t much else to do on that rugged coast,” Mr. Pringle explains. “Sometimes we went on hikes, but it rained a lot, and there was only one boat a week to the fishing village of Ucluelet, where we got supplies. Oh, and they had a motor transport garage on the post, but seeing as there were no roads and they only had one truck, there wasn’t much reason for it. That just goes to show how the military wastes a lot of resources!”
Adjacent to the outpost was a group of abandoned houses that had been inhabited by Japanese fishermen before the war; however, as in America, they were quickly removed to internment camps following Pearl Harbor. The extra housing allowed for the wives of several of the soldiers to travel to Vancouver and stay near their husbands.
In the war’s final year, Mr. Pringle was sent up to Port Hardy, on the island’s northern end, where he was stationed for two months before the imminent conclusion of hostilities precipitated another transfer to #2 Wireless School in his hometown of Calgary. There, as at Spring Cove, he showed movies at the base’s PX.
Just prior to VJ Day, Cpl. Pringle was discharged and allowed to return home, which he did. Of his activities after the war, he says, “In those days you were allowed to wear your uniform for a year after you were discharged, so I put mine back on and hitchhiked to Hollywood. It was so easy, being in uniform; everybody treated me very well. The Hollywood USO Canteen put me up for a month, while I hobnobbed with all kinds of famous people. Among others, I met (then-Lt. Col.) Jack Warner, of WarnerBrothers, who later became my boss.
Mr. Pringle returned to Calgary to work as a radio announcer for station CJCJ. One day a man walked in and asked if there was an opening for an announcer. Mr. Pringle interviewed the man and gave him a job. The man’s name was Leslie Nielsen, and he was very glad to have been given a start in the entertainment business by a fellow RCAF veteran. Mr. Pringle later worked as an audio engineer in Hollywood, on movies and television shows such as The Waltons. He retired in 1983. As to his days in the RCAF, he remarks that “I can’t say I won the war; it was just one big party really (running the canteen at Spring Cove). I never wanted a rifle in my hands, so I guess you might call me ‘chicken’, but I feel that I did my part.” |
