While we don’t know a lot of personal things about Norval Marley, not even what kind of music he liked, we at least have his military service record. As the BBC cites, much of the record contains biographical and biometric data. He was born in Crowborough, East Sussex, England, for instance. Sites like Find a Grave state that he might have had Jewish ancestry going back to Syria.
The BBC says Marley enlisted in Liverpool in August 1916 after arriving back to England from Cuba after having been in the U.S. His job, it seems, was “construction engineer.” He was also 5 feet, 5 inches tall, and a scant 124 pounds. And yet, he was deemed fit enough to fight, and trained along with 20,000 other men at a giant training camp at Park Hall, Shropshire, England. But, he never wound up being deployed.
Per the BBC, medical reports described Marley as a “neurotic type of man.” Marley claimed to have urinary incontinence, meaning that he wet his bed. By September 1916 — a mere month after enlisting — he complained of feeling sick and underwent some operation, but we’ve got no information on the purpose of the operation or if there was anything actually wrong with him. He wound up being sent to a military hospital and serving in the Labour Corps, a support battalion composed of people not healthy enough to serve on the frontlines.
