John Bowen was registered as an absent voter in 1919, living with his wife Frances in The Square, Daresbury.
He was born in Newtown, Shropshire, in June1886, the son of Edwin and Rebecca Elizabeth Bowen, nee Beckett. In the 1911 census he was living with his older brother Herbert and his wife, and working as a waggoner on a farm.
He married Frances Bethia Diggery in Newtown Parish Church on 17th April 1912. In the family information section in his enlistment papers he also gives details of a child named Victor Henry, born in 1910. He was living at 3, Horton, Wem, Shropshire, and was 30 years old when he enlisted in 1916. He was assigned to the Cheshire Regiment, although his regimental number is missing, and he served in France during 1917-18. He had been transferred to the Labour Corps, and was serving in the 547th Agricultural Company with the regimental number 70242, when his name was linked to Daresbury in 1919.
After he was demobbed he made an application for an award for hearing loss and vertigo, but was turned down as it was said the problem had existed before his military service.
John and Frances went home to Shropshire to live, and John continued to work as a farm labourer, his occupation recorded on the 1939 register. He died, probably in 1946, and certainly before 1950, when a marriage between Frances B. Bowen and Percy Littlehales was registered at Oswestry.