CSUF associate history professor Jonathan Markley recounts his grandfather’s experiences in World War I

Daily Titan

CSUF associate history professor Jonathan Markley recounted his grandfather Bruce Fowler’s experience serving in World War I at the Fullerton Public Library Monday.
“For the last couple of years, I’ve really gotten obsessed with the family history, and it’s been a rather interesting one,” Markley said.
Markley was born in New Zealand and taught history in Hong Kong before moving to Australia and then to California. He has been teaching history in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences since 2006 and researches Chinese historiography and foreign relations, according to the college’s faculty website.
Fowler died when Markley was 16. Markley said his grandfather never talked about his war experiences so he started a research project to reconstruct Fowler’s life.
“Some of it comes from family history, but most of it has been researched, (which consisted of) going to the archives, going to official histories and going to all sorts of other things,” Markley said.
Markley said Fowler was born in New Zealand but moved to London at the age of 2. After his 18th birthday, he decided to go back to New Zealand where he volunteered to join WWI in 1914.
Throughout his time serving in the war, Fowler worked as a cattle driver for a mobile field hospital, a field baker and was trained to shoot heavy machine guns. He later joined the New Zealand Machine Gun Corps in 1917, Markley said.
Fowler suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder during the New Zealand Disaster, Markley said.
“None of the family had the faintest clue that he’d ever been wounded in the shoulder. That just came out of his military records,” Markley said.
Markley also shared photos of Fowler after he was shot in the face when an object ricocheted off a machine gun during a German attack on New Zealand soldiers.
Fowler survived the wound and ...

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