Lance Corporal Clarence Waterman
Lance Corporal Clarence Alden Waterman was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on June 1st, 1897, to Charles and Clara (nee Holt) Waterman. Clarence had two brothers, Roy and Charles, and one sister, Marion. His mother had passed away before the family moved to Canada, and Clarence lived in Pleasant River with his father, stepmother Lena and siblings, working as a farmer. When he enlisted at age eighteen on October 28th, 1915, he stood five feet and eight inches tall (173 cm), had brown hair and brown eyes, and weighed 135 pounds (61 Kg).
Clarence joined the Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR) as an Infantryman and was given the rank of Private and regimental number 478699. He arrived in England on the SS Olympic on April 11th, 1916, and by June 6th, he was in the trenches of France fighting Germans. Trench warfare was brutal, and Private Waterman suffered a gunshot wound to his right elbow and shoulder just one month later on July 25th.
He recovered quickly and returned to the trenches, where the wet and muddy nature of the trench environs led him to develop dermatitis and impetigo in October. After another brief hospital stay, he was discharged, and in fighting form once again, he returned to his Regiment to continue the campaign against the foe. He had not yet had his twentieth birthday.
Private Waterman remained on the front lines in France for twenty-nine months, at a monthly pay rate of twenty dollars. He was promoted to Lance Corporal on October 12th, 1918, and perished in action on October 25th, just seventeen days before the end of the war.
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The Liverpool Advance noted on December 4th, 1918 that “Another noble young man for who we mourn was the son of Charles Waterman, of Pleasant River. Clarence was killed in action at the front about the 25th of October. He was of the most exemplary character. It is all the more trying to his friends that he so nearly succeeded in getting through and returning home.”
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From the Bridgewater Bulletin on December 3rd, 1918 "His scholarship was noticed by his superior officers and he was offered office work, but he wrote to his father saying, "I declined the offer. I want to get into the trenches, in to the thick of the fight." His letters were always full of cheer and it did one good to read them."
Lance Corporal Waterman was posthumously awarded the Bar to the Military Medal. His father, Charles received the Memorial Plaque and Scroll, and his stepmother, Lena was given the Memorial Cross Medal (also known as the Silver Cross). His stepmother, as a dependent, was given the War Service Gratuity to Dependents of Deceased Soldiers of 180 dollars. Lance Corporal Waterman left his estate to his father, Charles.
Lance Corporal Waterman is interred in the Valenciennes (St Roch) Communal Cemetery near the Belgian border; in Plot 11, Row D, grave number 27. His family also erected a memorial headstone in the Waterman Family Cemetery in Pleasant River, and he is commemorated with a plaque in the Pleasant River United Church.
Lance Corporal Waterman is commemorated on page 519 of the World War One Book of Remembrance. He is also listed on the Caledonia Cenotaph.
Online References
War Grave Search – https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/577988/c-a-waterman/
Local Grave Search – https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/225974532/clarence-alden-waterman
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/24375852/clarence-alden-waterman
Canadian Virtual War Memorial - https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/detail/577988?Clarence%20Alden%20Waterman
Canadian Census (no record found, because the family may have moved to NQ after the 1911 census) - https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/index
First World War Personnel Records Database (25.4 Meg download file) - https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Home/Record?app=pffww&IdNumber=301117&ecopy=658098a
