He also served as a lieutenant in the South Nottinghamshire Hussars Yeomanry, Royal Horse Artillery.
[2] According to R. Bruce Hitchner, "Wells was generally acknowledged to be the leading English-language scholar on the Roman army and frontier in Germany".
[1] In 1992 Malcolm Todd wrote that The German Policy of Augustus "has still not been matched by a synthesis of comparable range and since 1972 there has been a quantum leap in knowledge resulting from the definitive publication of key sites and the discovery of several hitherto unknown Augustan bases".
[1] In 1987, Wells moved to San Antonio in Texas, where he took up the first T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professorship of Classical Studies at Trinity University.
Wells also had an active role as an archaeologist of the ancient Punic and Roman antiquities of provinces: at Carthage from 1976 to 1986, he directed the excavations made by the second Canadian team, under the "Save Carthage" promoted by UNESCO, a task which he continued under the auspices of Trinity University, and of which he was director since 1991.