Additions will be checked before being published on the website and where possible will be forwarded to the person who submitted the original entries. Your contact details will not be forwarded, but they can send a reply via this messaging system.
please scroll down to send a message
Gnr. Andrew Gibson
British Army 147th Brigade, 10th Bty. Royal Field Artillery
from:Edinburgh
(d.6th Nov 1916)
Andrew Gibson was probably a bit of an adventurer and risk-taker at heart. At the age of 19 in 1901 he volunteered to go and fight in the Anglo-Boer War. By the time he arrived in South Africa the conflict was largely being conducted on horseback - the life of a trooper largely consisted of chasing across miles and miles of scrub to find on arrival that the Boers had all ridden off. Violent interaction was limited but perhaps he gained a love of horses and this influenced his decision to join the RFA. When he signed up in October 1914 the RFA was all about canons being towed hither and thither across the battlefield by teams of horses supporting infantry and cavalry attacks. By 1915 the war had turned into the industrial, entrenched conflict we all know about today. I imagine the transformation and the growing realisation that the fighting was going to go on a lot longer than he had imagined weighed heavily with him, as it did many others.
He enlisted for WW1 at the age of 31, as a married man with four children and another on the way. He was destined never to see his fifth child Margaret, who was born when he was in Egypt, just a week or two before he embarked for Gallipoli. Soldiers were occasionally permitted leave, not often and not for long but being far from home, logistical difficulties and the fear of desertion probably condemned him to spend any leave he did get abroad.
He was killed on the Somme on 6th of November 1916 but he had very nearly died the year before. On the trip from Egypt to Gallipoli his brigade consisting of 650 men was on board the troopship SS Manitou when it was intercepted by a Turkish gun boat. They were given a few minutes to evacuate but they only had lifeboats for a third of them. The Turks made three attempts at torpedoeing the Manitou before being chased off by HMS Minerva. It seems like a farce, they were, after all, at a standstill in the water but in the panic to evacuate, one of the lifeboats broke and spilled its contents into the water and 50 men were drowned.
Despite the carnage elsewhere, Andrew was statistically unlucky to have died since only 16 members of the 147th were killed in WW1 post-Gallipoli. The daily war diary entry for 6th November 1916 reads as follows: Weather unsettled. A normal day. 2 shells pitched into 10th Battery low position. The second of these wounded 2 Other Ranks. No.108662 Gnr Cummings R. and No.40635 Gnr A Gibson. Andrew is recorded elsewhere as having died of his wounds later that day and he is buried in Bernafay Wood Cemetery near Montauban.
Robert Cummings, who must have been a mate of Andrew's, survived the shelling that day and indeed the remainder of the war. He returned home to Lancaster where he married and had two children, dying there in 1967 at the age of 77. On his medal card it states: Returned unclaimed.
