Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

04/05/1917

Date of Discharge

31/05/1919

Place of Enlistment

Vancouver, Canada

Gender

Male

Date of Birth

18/03/1881

Place of Birth

Queanbeyan NSW

Address (at enlistment)

Station Y, Seattle, Washington, USA (previously 'Glenloch' via Weetangera ACT)

Occupation

Motorman

Next of Kin

Ellen Morton (mother), Ocean Street, Bondi NSW

Service Number

2203813

Final Rank

Acting Corporal

Final Unit

78th Company, Canadian Forestry Corps

Born on 18 March 1881 at Queanbeyan, Morton grew up at Round Hill (also known as Mt. Painter) on a property on the northern boundary of the National Arboretum which his father William Morton acquired shortly after his birth. His mother, Ellen Le Count, came from Brindabella. William Morton, with some foresight, named his property ‘Glenloch’, meaning ‘valley of the lake’, but died in 1898 and is buried in St. John’s churchyard. Two of Norman’s brothers served as aldermen on Queanbeyan council and another was the first locally born man to train as a doctor. 

Morton enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in May 1917 in Vancouver, British Columbia describing himself as a “motorman” of Seattle, Washington in the United States of America although on his discharge he called himself a "lumber inspector". In March 1907 he left his job working for the tramways in Newtown and sailed to the USA. His sister Evelyn, a noted horsewoman, competed in an equestrian event near Seattle in 1912 presumably because her brother was already living there. Morton enlisted as part of the "Forestry Draft Vancouver", in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and was sent to the Railway Construction and Forestry Depot in Ottawa in July 1917. He embarked from Halifax, Nova Scotia on 18 August 1917 and arrived in Liverpool, England five days later. After further training at a depot at Sunningdale to the west of London he was sent to France with the 78th Company of the Canadian Forestry Corps (CFC) in October 1917. On arrival in France Morton was appointed as an acting Corporal and other than a period in quarantine with mumps, he served in the war in the Bordeaux region of France. The CFC was formed in 1916 because the British realised that the Canadians were particularly skilled in forestry and there was a huge demand for timber for use in trenches, as duckboards and for temporary buildings. The 78th Company CFC got most of its recruits from San Francisco and Seattle and worked in the forests around Bordeaux in southern France.

After his discharge in May 1919 he returned to Seattle but he later lived in Los Angeles in California although, anecdotally, he apparently married a French Canadian after the war and is believed to have lived the remainder of his life in Canada. 

Description - height 5 feet 10½ inches, chest 37½ to 40 inches, light complexion, grey eyes, light hair (going bald), Presbyterian, four moles, scars on his left and right arms and right wrist.

Library and Archives Canada - http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/personnel-records/Pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=178367
Peter Procter, 'Biographical Register of Canberra and Queanbeyan', Canberra, Heraldry and Genealogy Society of Canberra, 2001 (see entry for 'Morton, William')
Queanbeyan Age - 12 April 1907
Image courtesy of Catherine Genge