838893 Pte. Joseph Charles Carson was born on February 11th, 1898, in Owen Sound and was working in a local factory making pails when hostilities broke out.
On February 23rd, 1916, shortly after his 18th Birthday, Joe, attested to the 147th Battalion as a Private and was assigned to "D" Company under the command of Captain Robert Pollock.
Continuing to be billeted locally over the winter the Battalion departed for the training grounds of Camp Niagara on May 19th, 1916. As the conditions in the Militia's old training grounds were wanting the unit moved to the new training facility of Camp Borden in late June to carry on with their individual and collective training.
In September the unit received their orders to proceed overseas, while en-route they were detained in Amherst, Nova Scotia, for over a month due to an outbreak of diphtheria. The unit finally sailed for Great Britain on November 14th, 1916, on the S.S. Olympic, a sister ship to the Titanic.
On January 1st, 1917, the 147th Battalion ceased to exist when it became the nucleus for the 8th Reserve Battalion, whose task it was to supply reinforcements to the 58th Battalion and the 4th C.M.R. Of the 942 Officers and men that sailed with the 147th Battalion, 354 of them were transferred to the 4 C.M.R. Joseph Carson would be one of them, being taken on strength of his new Battalion on April 22nd, 1917, in a reinforcement draft after the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
Joe served for a little over a month and a half before he was wounded on June 8th, while the Battalion was manning the front lines near Maricourt.
Private Joseph Charles Carson was struck off strength of the 4th C.M.R. on July 11th, 1919.
Biography credit: George Auer