Life as a POW: What My Father Never Told Me

As a young boy growing up in a small northern Ontario town, author Duncan Pringle often senses his father’s unease and disquiet. Though Pringle knows intellectually that his father was a POW in German camps, he gives little thought to the suffering his father may have endured, or its possible effects on his family life. As a young adult, he’s too busy career-building and raising his own family.

Pringle’s father rarely speaks of his experiences regarding the three years of his imprisonment, but when he does, he tells tales of POW veterans’ antics immediately following the war, laughing until the tears flow. He never speaks of the shame and anguish he may have felt as an RCAF navigator, being shot down after only four missions.

Now in his 60s, his father deceased, Pringle desires to have the conversation with his father he now wishes he’d had. Drawn from his father’s letters home and other primary source materials, Life as a POW chronicles the years John Pringle spent as a prisoner of the Germans—and provides a redemptive, stirring look into the healing and forgiveness that can occur after the trauma of war.

Duncan Pringle grew up knowing his father, John Pringle, was a prisoner of war during World War II. His father experienced traumatic things of which he could not speak, leaving many blanks in the narrative of his wartime experiences. Pringle decided to write this book in an effort to fill in the blanks, shedding light on some of his father's experiences-and their effects on his family. He hopes this book encourages children of other POWs to discover their own fathers' stories about an often unspoken chapter in their lives.

Pringle earned a master's degree in social work and a graduate diploma in theology. As a retired social worker and former pastor, he has a good understanding of the effects of PTSD. He drew from this understanding, but primarily from his own personal observations as the son of a POW, to write this book. This is his first published work.