Young Leslie Spencer Bowman was a doctor’s son from Ulverston, but he probably never spent much of his short life there as he was, like so many of his class, packed off to preparatory school at Seascale at an early age before going on to receive his secondary education at Clifton College. However, on the outbreak of war he returned to Ulverston and joined the 4th Battalion, being gazetted as a Second-Lieutenant on December 23rd, 1914.
He went to France with the Battalion in May 1915 and, apart from receiving a minor wound a year later when out on patrol near Aveluy on May 7th, 1916, his service was fairly unremarkable.
Like a lot of young officers he was seduced by the glamour of becoming an aviator and in July he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He completed his training in the U.K. and was posted to back to France to join 53 Squadron as a newly-qualified pilot on December 23rd, 1916, a fortnight later being promoted to Lieutenant. He was wounded for a second time on June 7th but recovered quickly enough to be able to rejoin the squadron ten days later.
On June 25th, 1917, he set off in an RE8 on a reconnaissance flight with his observer, Second-Lieutenant James Power-Clutterbuck. Near Le Bizet, while returning from their mission, they were attacked by a predatory German fighter, for whom a lumbering RE8 presented a fairly easy target. The wings broke off under the machine gun fire and the aircraft fell burning to the ground in No Man’s Land between the opposing trenches. Subsequently the British troops in the vicinity managed to recover Power-Clutterbuck’s body but not that of Leslie Bowman, who is now commemorated on the Arras Flying Services Memorial.
Four days after celebrating his 20th birthday he'd become the 56th victim of Manfred von Richtofen, the Red Baron.
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