Information provided by Frank's grandson, Ken Bowie in 2022:
Frank Richard Bowie arrived in the United Kingdom in early 1917 for training and was a bugler for some time. Once he went to France he 'joined the boys'. He was listed as being in the Intelligence section of 4th Battalion when he was wounded at Hill 60 in Belgium on 21 March 1918, the first day of Operation Michael.
Frank returned to Australia in May 1919 and married Florence Dymock. Florence was the daughter of Thomas Dymock who was in 4th Battalion with Frank. By 1921, they had two boys: Thomas Alan and Leonard Frank. Leonard served in New Guinea in the Second World War.
Frank died in 1928 of Tuberculosis. Florence brought up the two boys and died herself in ~1952.
Information provided by Ron Inglis in 2023:
Born in Wollongong, Frank spent some of his youth in the NSW town of Gulgong, where he did two years of an apprenticeship in the blacksmith’s workshop of his brother-in-law, H J (Harry) Gudgeon. At 19 years of age, Frank entered the Salvation Army Officer Training College in Melbourne. Commissioned in 1913, Frank had numerous Salvation Army appointments over the next three years, until he enlisted in the AIF on 14 March 1916 at the RAS Showground in Sydney.
Frank’s parents were his nominated next-of-kin. David and Mary Bowie lived at 35 Beatrice Street, Auburn, and had themselves been Salvation Army officers from 1888 to 1896, their last appointment being Gulgong, where several of their children took up residence. Moving to the Sydney suburb of Auburn, David and Mary Anne became soldiers of the Auburn Salvation Army Corps.
Private Bowie spent five months in Australian training camps before embarking on the Wiltshire in August 1916. He also spent one year and two months in the Tidworth Barracks on the Salisbury Plain of England. He may have been involved in catering, as he spent October 1917 at the 'School of Cookery, Jellalabad Barracks, England'.
Private Bowie crossed to France and was taken on strength of the 4th Battalion, 1st Australian division on 10 December 1917. At that time, all the Australian divisions were enduring a bitterly cold winter in positions in the far north of France, the French-Belgian border region. Increased German activity was noted in early March 1918 and on 21 March 1918, Ludendorff launched his massive offensive. On this day, Private Bowie received a gunshot wound resulting in a fractured femur and thigh. He was taken back to the Orthopaedic Hospital in Shepherd’s Bush, London, and there he remained until he embarked for Australia on the Nestor on 20 May 1919.
Bowie returned to his parents’ home in Auburn, not only wounded in the leg but also suffering from TB. He spent the first eight months of 1920 in the Bodington Red Cross Sanatorium at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains. During this time he was discharged from the AIF on 28 May 1920 with a 100 per cent disability classification.
Frank and Florence married in St Luke’s Anglican Church, Burwood, and then settled in Wentworth Falls, the mountain air being considered beneficial to recovered consumptives.
Note: Some biographies state Frank's death in 1928 was the result of war-time gassing but there is no evidence in his military records that he was treated for any gas related injuries.
