[1] Prowse was appointed a second lieutenant in the 3rd (Militia) Battalion of Prince Albert's (Somerset Light Infantry) Regiment on 18 April 1889.

[1] He was seconded to the army's railway staff on 16 June 1900 and was mentioned in despatches by Field Marshal Lord Roberts on 8 February and 4 September 1901.

[12][13][14][15] During the war he served as a staff officer and was present at the Relief of Ladysmith and at the battles of Spion Kop, Vaal Krantz and the Tugela Heights, serving also in Natal, Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, and the Cape Colony, and receiving the Queen's Medal with five clasps and the King's Medal with two.

[23] He commanded the 1st Battalion of his regiment in action near Ploegsteert Wood in late 1914 and a farm in that area was named Prowse Point after him.

[24][22] The attacks of the 11th Brigade and the wider 4th Infantry Division, largely failed to take and hold the German positions, though some success was achieved at the Quadrilateral.

[24][22] Prowse was in the process of climbing out of the British forward trench, while organising a party of Seaforth Highlanders near an area of the front line known as Brett Street, when he was hit in the back by machine gun fire from the German positions at Redan Ridge Redoubt.

[22] Arthur Conan Doyle, in a 1916 book, claimed Prowse had been killed whilst telling his troops to "remember that they were the Stonewall Brigade".

[24][33][3] Prowse's grave is marked with the engraving chosen by his family "Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life".

[3] The wooden grave marker cross from Prowse's Vauchelles burial is now on display in St Mary Magdalene Church.

Cecil commanded the battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary and was lost, with most of his crew, at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, just weeks before Charles Bertie Prowse was killed in action.