Pte. Norman Darling 8th C.M.R. May 14, 1916

Frank & Maggie Darling with children, Norman (on knee) and Hanlan (stool)

113010   Norman Edgerton Darling

 Norman Darling was born on October 5^th 1885 to Francis Darling and his wife Margaret Ann Bell.  The family farmed on Lot 24, Concession 4, near Hall’s Glen, Dummer Township, Ontario.

Like many young men, Norman enlisted in the 8^th Canadian Mounted Rifles on March 29^th 1915 in Peterborough.  He had no previous military experience and listed his occupation as a book keeper on his attestation papers.  Four years earlier, on the 1911 Canada Census, he was listed as a cabinet maker.  His mother, Margaret, appears as his next of kin and supplied her address as living at 542 Water St., Peterborough, at the time.   He was 24 years of age at enlistment; he stood 5 feet 4 ½ inches tall and had a fair complexion, blue eyes and brown hair.  He was single and his religion was Methodist.

Pte. Darling trained with the 8^th C.M.R. at Kingston until the 9^th of June, when he was part of a draft of 8^th C.M.R men who left their comrades to begin the voyage overseas.  The 8^th boarded a train to Montreal, receiving several hearty cheers from Quebecois onlookers. Pte. Darling boarded a ship with 1,800 other soldiers, of various battalions and spent a relatively uneventful trip across the Atlantic.  The ship landed in Devonport on June 19^th.  It was here that three of the Peterborough boys of the 8^th C.M.R., Norman Darling, Dave Darrah and George Butcher, parted ways with their comrades and boarded a train to a Calvary Training depot in Canterbury.  Pte. Darrah, one of Darling’s Peterboro comrades, described receiving hearty cheers and much fanfare from the English on various stops along the route. Shortly after arriving, many of the Canadian battalions, including the 8^th CMR, were broken up and reorganized.  By the end of December 1915 , Private Darling was taken on strength to the 1^st Canadian Mounted Rifles.

The 1^st C.M.R arrived on the field in late September 1915 and in October, began its indoctrination into trench warfare in the Ploegstreert or “Plugs-street” sector south of Ypres.  Here the green battalion received instruction from more experienced troops through regular rotations into the front line.  Though the Ploegstreert sector was deemed a relatively quiet sector, the 1^st C.M.R.’s first trench experiences did not come without casualties.  In a 4 day period holding the front line at the “Brasserie Trenches”, the Battalion lost 5 men killed and 3 wounded.  The 1^st C.M.R. would continue to rotate in and out of the front line in the Ploegstreert area until the end of December. 

Darling wrote his mother on December 20^th describing a close call of his own in the front line:

“Things were pretty lively while we were in, and narrow escapes were so frequent that I’m beginning to think I bear a charmed life. Heavy artillery has been going on by both sides, and our trenches were battered up something fierce, and I had one shell burst right alongside me, tearing everything up and damaging my rife some, but got nothing myself but a shower of mud. Another shrapnel shell burst above where three of us we huggin the trench wall, raining shrapnel around us and hitting one of the boys on the head, luckily not very bad.”

 Pte. Darling also mentions other conditions that made life difficult in the trenches:

“I’ve lost so much sleep these last few days that I’m trying to catch up again.  We came back into supports last night after four days in the front line, and as I only had half an hour’s sleep while in there I was about all in when we got here.  The last night and day I had an awful time keeping awake, even on the firing step....  The worst we have to contend with is the mud. Everything is swimming, and although we have hip rubber boots our clothes were always soaked and you can about guess how pleasant we felt. We are now back in a big barn, nice and dry, with lots to eat which makes up for the other.  Expect to be here for four days, and then in the trenches again. Spent the afternoon trying to dry my blanket and overcoat, and I bet I scraped two pails of mud off the coat.  It was matted so thick it took me half an hour to find out whether I had a coat or a pile of mud.”

Pte. Darling and the 1^st C.M.R. would spend the rest of the winter in and out of the line in various areas around the Ploegstreert area.  On the 20^th of February they were granted leave to a Canadian training camp near Meteren, far from the immediate dangers of the front line.  The 1^st C.M.R. spent a month in the camp, receiving training and participated in an abundance of drills, exercises and route marches.  

Sanctuary Wood July 1916 (LAC)

On the 20^th of March, the Battalion moved back into the now familiar terrain near Hooge.  There they spent regular rotations in the front lines as well as on work details in various areas of that sector.

On April 29 the 1^st Mounted Rifles were relieved from their position in Sanctuary Wood and left by a march route to “F” Camp.  The Battalion remained in camp until the 6^th of May during which time they participated in Company and Platoon drills, bayonet fighting and Physical training in the afternoons.  Each night the Battalion supplied 300 men for working parties to bury cable from Zillebeke Bund forward, and clean and revett trenches in the Hooge sector.

On May 6^th under the cover of darkness the 1^st C.M.R. On the night of May 6^th 1916 the 1^st CMR moved from “Camp F” to the Railway Crossing near Flemertinghe, then by train to Ypres Asylum.  The battalion detrained at the Asylum and marched through Ypres in small parties on route to their destination of Hooge, a ruined village east of Ypres.  During the march through the ruined city of Ypres to Hooge, the small parties of men came under heavy shelling from the enemy.  The 1^st CMR War Diary records 15 soldiers killed in the bombardment (mostly from No.2 Platoon “A” Company), all inflicted close to Hellfire Corner, an important road junction on the way to Hooge.  During this tour the Battalion was occupied in cleaning and revetting the trenches they held.  During this time Norman had time to write two very cheery letters home.  In one, a seemingly flirtatious letter to a Miss Clarissa Peever, he jokes that Clarissa should send over her bull-dog:

“I’ll turn him loose on Fritz, who is only forty yards away from me now, I bet he will scare him worse than I am doing at present.  He has been trying his hardest to hit me with a big shell ever since I came here a few days ago but I am a pretty good dodger and he has to go some if he does for I am a pretty small target. Just now he must be cleaning out his gun for he is quiet and I hope he stays that way until I get this finished.” 

 On the same day Norman wrote to a Mrs. Darrah in Peterborough about running into her son Dave in the support trenches in the Hooge sector. 

“ I shook the company and threw in my belongings along with his and for three days now we have been making a home out of this dug-out and living and feeling as merry as kings...we have all kind of hardships and run big risks but if you had a ‘snap’ of Dave and I in this dug-out, laughing and talking while we cook our meals on a coal oil stove, trying to figure out some new dish or way to serve ‘bully beef’ you wouldn’t worry much, but laugh yourself, to see how contented and self-satisfied we look when our meal turns out a bigger success than expected. Of course it is not all pleasure we get, but we manage to see the bright sides of things which in ordinary life, would be annoying.  When we get back we have it all planned out to build a dug-out in your backyard and live this life until such times as we get civilized enough to appear in a parlour.”

Though Pte. Darling makes light of the situation endured in the trenches of Hooge, the War Diaries show 55 casualties during this 7 day tour.   Pte. Darling was one of these casualties.  At approximately 3.pm on May 14 1916, several hours before the Battalion was to be relieved from the front line, Pte. Darling was severely wounded by an enemy shell.  The Burial records state that he received extensive damage to the lower part of his body and lived for about 3 hours; it adds that he was conscious until the last, showing great bravery.

Norman was buried in Menin Road Cemetery a ½ mile east of Ypres, close to where he was wounded..  His grave register notes that his grave was never registered, and it was probably destroyed by shelling later in the war.  With no known grave, Pte. Norman Darling name was inscribed on the Menin Gate Memorial along with the names of 54,896 other Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave.  Private Darling also appears on the Dummer Township Cenotaph in Warsaw Ontario, and on the Cenotaph in Foxwarren, Manitoba.

Sources: 

Archives of Ontario. Registrations of Births and Stillbirths – 1869-1913. MS 929, reels 1-245. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Archives of Ontario.

Canada. "Soldiers of the First World War (1914-1918)." Record Group 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 4930 - 35. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa

Library and Archives Canada; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; War Graves Registers: Circumstances of Death; Record Group Number: RG 150, 1992-93/314; Volume Number: 170. Online [http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/microform-digitization/006003-119.01-e.php?2=28&q3=2280&sqn=454&tt=1139&PHPSESSID=pf868q7td101us1usidkvu8pl1] Mikan Number 46246, Microform 31829_B016735, page 454-455.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC); War Graves Registry: Commonwealth War Graves. RG150, 1992-1993/314, Box 39-244; Box: 61.online [http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/microform-digitization/006003-119.01-e.php?q2=27 &q3=2171&sqn=462&tt=1267&PHPSESSID= 028f5r8mogpo7mf2v8hjq5qmo2]  Mikan Number: 46246, Microform: 31830_B016600, Page 462-463

Library and Archives Canada (LAC); Year: 1901; Census Place: Peterborough (Town/Ville), Peterborough (west/ouest), Ontario; Page: 3; Family No: 22.Library and Archives Canada (LAC); Year: 1891; Census Place: Dummer, Peterborough East, Ontario; Roll: T-6363; Family No: 46.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC); War Diaries- 1^st Battalion, Canadian Mounted Rifles 1915/09/01 -1919/02/28. Online [http://data4.collectionscanada.ca/

Peterborough Evening Examiner. “Warm Reception for 8^th C.M.R. Boys in England”  July 22, 1915.

Peterborough Evening Examiner. “Letter From the Late Pte. Darling.” May 30, 1916. 

Peterborough Evening Examiner. “Receives a Letter by Pte. Darling Four Days Before his Death.” May 30, 1916.