Robert Gibbs

Bank: Westminster Bank

Place of work: Head Office, London

Died: 4 January 1943

Robert Alfred Gibbs was born on 12 September 1919, the son of Frederick Arthur and Helen Elizabeth Gibbs. He joined Westminster Bank in September 1936 at its South Croydon branch. He moved to the Southern Control department in the bank's head office a year later, where he was well-liked for his ‘quiet manner and constant cheerfulness’. 

Early in 1939 Gibbs joined the Territorial Army (London Scottish). He was mobilised for active service at the outbreak of war in September and posted to the Gordon Highlanders. He went with them to the Far East, where he was taken prisoner during the fall of Singapore in February 1942. In July 1943 his wife Margaret received a note from him confirming that he was a prisoner of the Japanese but assuring her that he was otherwise well. In fact, however, Private Gibbs had died in Thailand more than six months earlier, on 4 January 1943, when he was 23 years old. His family did not learn of his death until after the end of the war.