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Sarah Gibson, dispatch rider and one of the ‘Fighting Wellses’ lauded for their war record – obituary

Sarah Gibson
Sarah Gibson

Sarah Gibson, who has died aged 98, was the last of the “Fighting Wellses of Felmersham”, as newspapers during the Second World War took to calling the nine children – seven sons and two daughters – of Sir Richard Wells Bt (1879-1957), the Bedford brewer and for 23 years the town’s MP.

Reporting the creation of Sir Richard’s baronetcy on January 1 1944, The Daily Telegraph observed: “The family, which has been called ‘The Fighting Wellses’, has a record of war service second to none.”

The Telegraph on the Fighting Wellses
The Telegraph on the Fighting Wellses

Eight of his children were in uniform during the Second World War, the ninth having already married a naval officer, and by the time Sarah joined the WRNS in 1942 three of her brothers had lost their lives in action: Kit, a lieutenant-commander and gunnery officer of the carrier Glorious, went down with her off Norway in June 1940; Jimmy was killed in action over the Netherlands leading 600 Squadron in May 1940, and Tom, a major in the Beds & Herts, was killed defending Singapore in February 1942.

“Wren Wells” had scarcely learnt to salute and call her dormitory a cabin before she found out that she had “volunteered” to be an Admiralty Dispatch Rider (DR). She spent the next four busy years riding from Whitehall to Bletchley Park and Oxford on a motorcycle so heavy that she needed help to pick it up.

Her parents had hoped for a safer job behind a desk for their daughter, but were thrilled to meet her on her motorbike as they arrived at the House of Commons one day.

Sarah Gibson
Sarah Gibson

On one occasion, in the unlit streets of the London blackout, Sarah knocked down a general outside the War Office, but instead of going to the officer’s rescue, the sentry on duty scooped up first Sarah and then her bike.

As she asked about her victim (who turned out to be unhurt) the man muttered: “Never you mind about ’im Miss, ’e’s only a Hofficer. You be on yer way now.”

Sarah was lucky. A colleague lost her life when she rode her bike into a bomb crater in the blackout; another was killed by a shell splinter in her own bed in Chelsea. More than 100 Wren DRs were killed on duty. Yet in spite of the dangers of blackout, bombs, wintry weather and London’s slippery, woodblock-paved streets, the dispatches always had to get through.

In December 1942 Sarah Wells’s unit was excited to be issued two brand-new Ariels to replace old BSA 250cc bikes, and she wrote that as one of the best riders she had been given the second one “b.ecause I take such care of my things. This will take a bit of living down …”

Sarah Wells is second from right
Sarah Wells is second from right

Sarah Josephine Wells and her twin Oliver were born on March 10 1922, the youngest of the nine children of Sir Richard and the former Dorothy Maltby, an artist, who had been so miserable at school that she had her two daughters, Sarah and her older sister Mary, taught by governesses at home. Neither felt that this had been a success, and they spent much of their lives patching holes in their education.

Sarah did, however, become a crack shot, taught by her father, and was presented at Court in July 1939; she recalled the limousine ride down the Mall to Buckingham Palace when, exactly three years later, she was there on her bike, carrying copies of Russian War News from the Soviet Embassy.

The Wells family: Sarah is in the front, second from right
The Wells family: Sarah is in the front, second from right

Her twin, Oliver, miraculously survived the crash of his Lancaster in 1943, and though declared lost in action, he was in fact being sheltered by the Belgian Resistance. Captured after four months, he spent the rest of the war as a PoW. Sarah had never believed him dead.

Oliver Wells, who died in 2012, remained in the RAF for a while after the war, taking part in the Berlin Airlift and achieving the rank of wing-commander. Their brother David won the MC as a gunner in Burma in 1944, while brother George, a paratroop surgeon, introduced Sarah to her future husband, Dr Michael Gibson, a St Thomas’s colleague of George’s and a wartime RAF doctor.

Wells family group, 1925: Sarah is second from right 
Wells family group, 1925: Sarah is second from right

On VE-Day Sarah wrote home: “London is very gay … The tension during the last few days has been terrific, and last night the bubble burst. We are working just as usual of course … I had to plough my way through crowds of waiting people to reach Downing Street and the Foreign Office, and I had to do it three times, which was an effort.”

Demobbed as Leading Wren in April 1946, she found civilian life dull and joined the Control Commission in Berlin as a driver for a further year. She found that her cigarette ration could usefully be exchanged for items such as German binoculars, but her Charlottenburg piano teacher’s most urgent request was for brown darning wool. Letters home enthused about dances at the American Red Cross Club with its unlimited doughnuts and Coca-Cola.

With her husband Michael Gibson
With her husband Michael Gibson

In 1947 Sarah Wells married Dr Michael Gibson, with whom she lived sociably in Notting Hill and at a holiday cottage in Tuscany, her command of Italian polished by a sequence of Italian house guests in London.

She remained an enthusiastic driver, of cars rather than motorcycles, preferring Lancias, but she remained modest about her war service and reluctant even to discuss it.

The Gibsons enjoyed opera and London’s theatre and arts, and in retirement lived in Piddlehinton, Dorset, where Michael died in 2007. Sarah Gibson’s two sons survive her.

Sarah Gibson, born March 10 1922, died May 26 2020​