Eric Charles BOWLES

Image from the Oxford Mail, 11 Februray 1942.

Eric Bowles was born in August 1920 in Minster Lovell near Witney. His parents, Charles and Florence (née Clapton) had both been born and brought up in Charterville, the Chartist estate just south of Minster Lovell. They must have known each other all their lives, as their large families lived only six houses apart, and they were born within four months of each other. Charles’s father was a market gardener and Florence’s was a farm labourer.

As a young woman Florence worked as a live-in servant in nearby Brize Norton, and Charles worked as a gardener in Alfreton in Derbyshire. They married in St Kenelm’s Church in Minster Lovell in August 1919, when they were both 27. By this time Charles was employed as a railway guard at Didcot. It is possible that his job on the Great Western Railway (GWR) meant that he had been in a reserved occupation and hence had not been conscripted to fight during the First World War.

Charles and Florence’s first son Eric was born in Minster Lovell in August 1920; soon afterwards they moved to Oxford, Charles having obtained a job as a goods guard at the GWR station there. In 1921 the young family was living in Davenant Road, north of Summertown. Charles and Florence’s second son Dennis was born in July 1923, in their home parish of Minster Lovell.

In around 1925 the Bowles family moved to 32 Pitt Road (now Chatham Road) off the Abingdon Road in south Oxford. The area – known as Cold Harbour (or Arbour) – is part of the parish of St Matthew’s. Eric and Dennis attended New Hinksey School in Church Street (now Vicarage Road). They were both keen footballers, and played for the school team. Eric later played for the Cold Arbour Club.

On leaving school, Eric was apprenticed to Lucy & Co, the iron foundry in Jericho. In May 1939, when he was eighteen, he joined the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry (whose headquarters were at Cowley Barracks on Hollow Way). As a member of the Territorial Army, he was called up immediately when war broke out four months later. He became a Lance Corporal, service number 5384691. The following year he must have volunteered to join No. 12 Commando, one of the commando units formed in 1940 by order of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who called for specially-trained troops to “develop a reign of terror down the enemy coast”. They were a small force of volunteers trained to carry out raids and sabotage operations in enemy occupied territory. No. 12 Commando was formed on 5 August 1940 in Northern Ireland, and its members were drawn from Irish regiments and from the 53rd and 61st Infantry Divisions which were based there at the time. Whether Eric travelled to Northern Ireland to train with the Commando there, or joined it when it came to England in 1941, is unclear.

In early 1941 the unit was billeted for a brief time at Warsash, a village in southern Hampshire at the mouth of the River Hamble, which flows into Southampton Water. It was here that Eric, a member of ‘D’ troop, was fatally injured when the trawler that he was patrolling in was attacked by enemy aircraft. He died from his wounds on 14 February 1941. He was twenty, and had not yet seen service overseas.

Eric's body was brought back to Oxford and he was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery, one of 58 Second World War casualties who are commemorated there. Soon afterwards, No. 12 Commando moved to Inveraray in Scotland for amphibious training. His death was reported in the Oxford Mail on 26 February 1941. On 17 June 1941 he was Mentioned in Dispatches for gallantry during enemy action; this was reported in the Oxford Mail on 11 February 1942.

As well as on the memorial in St Matthew's Church, Eric is commemorated on the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour, which is in the church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket, and in the Second World War Book of Remembrance in the Regimental Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral.

Eric’s younger brother Dennis married Edith Gardner in 1947, and they had a son, named Eric after his deceased uncle, in 1952.

Eric and Dennis’s parents remained living at 32 Pitt Road. Charles died there in January 1958, aged 65. Florence continued to live in the house until at least 1966 (by which time the road had been renamed Chatham Road). She died in June 1970, aged 77. Both are buried alongside their son Eric at Rose Hill, "Reunited" as it says on their gravestone.

Research by Liz Woolley.

Eric and Dennis Bowles in the New Hinksey School football team, (left) 1934 and (right) 1936-7. Images from The Changing Faces of South Oxford and South Hinksey, Book 1 (pp. 81-2) by Carole Newbigging. (Click on either image to close)

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