Without question, Gibson promotes himself as leader of the pack and the boat’s boss

Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 104

They assumed Angus and his companions had died during the night. Gibson stated that, at the end of his 26 days adrift, only three people and himself had survived. Thanking the corporal for his evidence, the judge said: “You had a remarkable escape.” He summed up the hearing by telling the court he had arrived at the conclusion Angus had died on the night of March 2-3 1942.

I would like to know what was in the mind of 53-year-old Gordon MacIntyre (Lord Sorn) when he told Walter Gibson he had had a remarkable escape. Three generations of MacIntyres, incidentally, have entered my life since that date.

In the 1970s I knew Bobby, Sorn’s son, and in 2013 Gavin, Bobbie’s son, as a student of a course I taught at Edinburgh University. I make this observation because it illustrates how Scotland was, and in many respects still is, a small, largely rooted, society.

Wasn’t there a hint of irony or even of suspicion in Lord Sorn’s comment to Gibson? Perhaps. I’m sure the judge would have at least got wind of the confusion surrounding Gibson’s rank.

Writing in January 1946 in response to Gibson’s statement on what happened after the Rooseboom sank, the War Office advised the Enquiries and Casualties Department of the Colonial Office that ‘it is unlikely Gibson will be confirmed in his commission so if you have occasion to write to him he had better be referred to as Corporal!’

The court petition, however, referred to the Argyll soldier as a sergeant and the Scotsman report on the court proceedings on June 13 1949 claimed he was a lieutenant.

With the help of Macdonald Daly, Gibson wrote an article about his experience on the lifeboat.

Its serialisation in late 1949 in the Scottish Sunday Express provoked anger within the regiment, which prompted General McMillan, colonel of the regiment, to write on November 15 to Daly stressing Walter Gibson, a corporal in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, had never been granted a commission either by Lieutenant-Colonel Robertson (one-time commanding officer of the Argylls) or Brigadier Paris.

It’s significant Gibson named these two senior officers and not Colonel Stewart as they were killed in action and were unable to refute the claim. As for the moment, when shortly before his death on the lifeboat, Captain Mike Blackwood allegedly confided to Gibson that Paris was going to recommend him for a Distinguished Conduct Medal, this also could never be verified as both officers died on the boat.

In his letter to the newspaper editor General McMillan emphasised that Gibson was discharged from the army as a corporal and that in a War Office missive dated January 25 1946, AG (Adjutant General) officers categorically refuted his statement that he ever held a commission.

Gibson’s colleagues in the 2nd battalion regarded him more with amusement than with indignation or anger. Major Eric Moss remembered him strolling around the barracks modelling himself on his superior, Lieutenant-Colonel LB Robertson. At the end of the war, Moss was released from captivity.

When he reached Rangoon he found Major Gairdner, the Argylls 2nd in command, in hospital. From his bed Gairdner advised Moss that if he saw Corporal Bloody ‘Hoot’ Gibson, wearing two pips on his shoulder, he should get them off him.

But Moss never caught up with the corporal, who was ‘swanning around’ as a 2nd lieutenant. When, after their long voyage home, the released Argyll captives arrived at Southampton and gathered in the transit camp, Moss leafed through a visitors’ book and saw the name, Captain W. G. G. G. Gibson. ‘Every time he promoted himself he added another ‘G’ to his name!’ said Moss.

Imprisoned

He next heard that someone had seen Gibson in a railway carriage in Glasgow with the MC (Military Cross) ribbon and three pips on his shoulder. A month after the Japanese interrogated Gibson and Doris Lim in Padang, the former made a journey of 900 miles lasting five days by lorry with 1,600 British, Dutch and Eurasian captives to Medan on the north coast of Sumatra, where they were imprisoned.

With Gibson was planter John Hedley, a Johore Volunteer Officer commissioned as a lieutenant in HM Forces General Service stationed with 1st Mysore Infantry in Singapore. Hedley confirmed that on arriving in the prisoner of war camp in Padang, Gibson claimed he was an officer, which aroused the anger of a number of Australian prisoners who gave him ‘a sound drubbing,’ and not the light-hearted play he referred to in his books.

Notwithstanding the disrepute officers and men of the battalion held him in, Gibson in the account of his lifeboat experiences, strikes a note of megalomania or, as Eric Moss suggested, psychopathology. While testifying in court, however, his responses to questions posed by counsel and judge were cryptic and restrained.

Nevertheless, in not needing to expatiate on the occurrences in the boat, the witness gives an incomplete picture of what actually happened. Gibson refers to Lance Corporal Jock Gray as a British officer, which is untrue. Gibson claims that Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas died 24 hours after he clambered on board the boat but, after being pushed off it, he died soon afterwards.

Opposite page 16 of the British edition of the Boat is a sketch of the author wearing a Glengarry with its double dice pattern around the rim and a large Argyll badge pinned on its side. Gibson holds a pipe to his mouth above which grows a handlebar moustache.

The American edition has a photograph of the soldier in an identical pose. In each, he appears strong, manly, managing and accomplished. But something isn’t right. From the way he holds his pipe to the jaunty manner in which he wears his Glengarry, Gibson appears thoroughly theatrical and phoney, in his attempt to impersonate an army officer.

Without question, Gibson promotes himself as leader of the pack and the boat’s boss.

In the Boat, the author explains how, after Slim River when he accompanied Captain Lapsley in the jungle, the officer appointed him as his right hand man because he read maps so well. On the boat, Colonel Acworth put Gibson in charge of ensuring survivors received the correct measure of rations. Gibson also claimed that Captain Mike Blackwood asked him to help look after the brigadier.

At all times, Gibson gives the impression that he is in the centre of things and in charge. He writes that it was he who took over discipline on the boat after the officers died. In his War Office statement, he explained how they collected the rain water on the boat and, as the sole surviving officer, he rationed it out.

Many asked how the corporal survived while all, except three others, did not. His wounds, he admitted, helped prevent him from having to spend time in the water clinging to the side of the boat. In court, he explained that when the torpedo struck he received an injury to his head and shoulder but omitted to mention his other wounds such as his shin damaged by a piece of metal that had lodged in it.

More tomorrow