GIBSON Hugh Stuart

Hugh Gibson attended Bromsgrove School from 1903 to 1905.  He was a Monitor and also in the XI and XV teams.  He took up acting as a profession and was making his mark when the war broke out.  He was for a time in the Army Service Corps but after recovering from typhoid fever contracted abroad, he took a commission.  A staff officer wrote (in the Morning Post):
“News of the death of Captain Hugh Gibson will come as a great shock to all who had the pleasure of serving with him.  Gibson joined up at the very outset of the war, throwing overboard excellent prospects.  He had had no military training but he knew how to drive a motor car, and he was engaged in that capacity during the early fighting.  He went through the stress and strain of the Marne battle, then fighting on the Aisne, and the 1st battle of Ypres as a motor car driver – a time when that was no ‘cushy’ job.  Afterwards he was given a commission in the infantry – very much like exchanging the frying pan for the fire – and joined the South Staffordshire Regiment – the ‘White Knots’ as distinguished from the North Staffordshire who are the ‘Black Knots’ – where he saw service in the line, both in France and Flanders.  Invalided home, he recovered and was appointed officer in charge of physical training to a command depot at Ripon.  He displayed the greatest skill in restoring to fitness men who had been wounded, shell-shocked or suffered from disease. Not only that, but he organised within the Command theatrical entertainments of an extensive kind.  Captain Gibson turned a spare dining hut into a well-equipped theatre, found among the men the necessary talent, wrote his own plays and revues and was so successful that he ran companies, drawn from the shifting population of a Command depot, at the Kursaal at Harrogate for a week at a time for the benefit of regimental and other charities.  He used to delight the troops by his perfect imitation of George Robey, who also revelled in Gibson’s mimicry.  All who knew “Gibbie” whether at the front or at home, will regret the passing of a gallant gentleman.”

Source: Bromsgrove School at War 1914-19 by Philip Bowen and Bromsgrove School at War 1914-19 by David Cross.