Private Thomas Murphy: what we know, and how we know it

2756457 Pte Thomas Murphy, Army Air Corps · 156 Parachute Battalion, 4th Parachute Brigade, 1st Airborne Division · formerly 2nd Battalion, The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) · born 11 November 1920, Kelty, Fife.

A family research file. Everything in it is graded by how good the evidence is, and everything still unproven is marked as such.

Every factual claim in this file points at a source, and a copy of every source is kept alongside it so nothing is lost if a website disappears (the sources). The family's own papers are reproduced in full (§11). Anything that rests only on Thomas Murphy's own word is marked ⚠️, and §12 goes through every one of those.

---

0. Evidence grades

A narrative version told from the Dutch side, organised by the households that sheltered him: The Dutch chain.

One thing in this file is testimony rather than established fact: the allegation against Tex Banwell (§6). It is labelled where it appears.

---

1. Subject

From the Black Watch to the paras. The Black Watch is an infantry regiment: foot soldiers, no parachutes. He joined it as one, and it took him through Palestine, Somaliland, Crete and Tobruk (Black Watch Museum). In 1942 the 2nd Battalion was sent to India, and there the Army was raising its first parachute battalion, the 151st, at Delhi, from volunteers out of the British infantry battalions already in the country. He volunteered, and left the Black Watch for good. The 151st was renamed 156 Parachute Battalion in November 1942 and joined 4th Parachute Brigade at Kabrit, Egypt, in 1943 (ParaData, 156 Bn; ParaData, 151 Bn). The family service list has him leaving India on 3 November 1942, the month of the renaming. Walsh took the same route: the compiler's note on his page has him volunteering in India and completing Parachute Course No. 29 at New Delhi from 27 September 1942 (Walsh, preamble). By 1945 the Record Office addressed him as A.A.C. (Army Air Corps, the Parachute Regiment's parent), while his service number stayed the one the Black Watch had given him in 1939 (letter).

Why. ⚠️ Family account only, but it is how his memoir opens: his brother Michael, in the same battalion, argued that two brothers in one unit was dangerous, if one were hit the other would go to him and both could be lost. Tom took the parachute transfer; Michael stayed (ParaData, family-supplied).

1.1 The war before Arnhem

The family's typed army service list (scan) is the only source for this period, and everything in it checks against the regimental record. A bracket beside the last four rows reads "with 151st–156th Para-Troops Regiment", the ordinals added in pencil.

His own memoir opens with three dates in his hand, "arrived Palestine 10-4-40 till 30-6-40, arrived Aden 1-7-40" (p.1), which are the service list's second and third rows to the day; so either the list was typed from something he held, or he wrote from it. The narrative then fills the first half in:

• British Somaliland, en route, "to relieve African troops who were pursued by Italians from Abyssinia", then on to occupy Crete. ✅ Black Watch Museum.
• Crete, held until the German airborne and seaborne invasion, then evacuated by the Royal Navy to Alexandria under continuous dive-bombing, "over 60 killed and buried at sea". He records that German High Command concluded it would never mount such an operation again. ✅ The Heraklion garrison and the withdrawal are documented (same); ⚠️ the "over 60" and the High Command remark are his own.
• Tobruk, relieved the Australians, shelled by "Bardia Bill", "pushed out on 21st November", "our losses were quite heavy". ✅ "Bardia Bill" was the troops' real name for the Italian gun used against the forces besieged in Tobruk (Australian War Memorial); the breakout and its 300 casualties in an hour are in the regimental history (Black Watch Museum). The photograph at the top of this page, Tom between two Australians in the Black Watch bonnet, belongs to these years; ◐ it is undated, and Tobruk is only the likeliest place for it (the papers).

A handwritten page headed "British Somaliland" (scan) carries the move to India: "We headed for Egypt, and at Port Tewfik boarded the Mauretania. We were shown outlines of Japanese aircraft, soldiers, and tanks. We were heading for Singapore. While at sea, Singapore fell, so we called into Bombay; a Japanese submarine surfaced in the bay; it had chased us all the way from Egypt. I contracted malaria and was admitted to Poona Hospital." ⚠️ His word for all of it; no source is archived for the Mauretania's movements or the submarine. It fits the service list, which ends Egypt on 8 March 1942 and starts India on the 9th, three weeks after Singapore fell on 15 February. The heading is the heading on the page; the text is about the voyage, not Somaliland.

The twelve-page memoir (pp.3–5) carries the rest of the road to Arnhem, all ⚠️ his word unless marked:

• Tobruk: Lord Haw-Haw on the "Brigade of Prisoners in the Desert"; the breakout of 21 November; "pulverised the famous 91st German crack Division (our losses were quite heavy)"; "made up to a Battalion again with Rhodesians". ✅ The breakout and the losses are regimental history (Black Watch Museum); the division's number is his.
• India: Bombay, then Ranchi, where "a boys' town run by a Father McCabe, who came from Lochore St Kenneth's back home" made the officers welcome, "football with the boys etc. was a pleasant break from the war". "An officer came to the Batt. looking for paratroops and I volunteered and transferred to New Delhi" (p.4). ✅ 151 Para Bn was raised at Delhi from volunteers in the infantry battalions in India (ParaData).
• Training: "there was 13 deaths by Roman Candles, so jumping was postponed, and we moved to Egypt. Before moving I took malaria and sandfly fever and spent 2 weeks in Poona hospital." Palestine, "a spot of training", then North Africa.
• Italy: "Invasion of Italy via Taranto, on the toe of Italy. I was transferred to the Mortar Platoon; we had a field day in Taranto. The Gerries dreaded our 3 inch mortar, which was very accurate." Hoped to see Rome, "but we stopped at Bari, and were replaced by PPA, or Popski's Private Army … Popski had a patch on one eye, and no two were dressed similarly" (p.5). ✅ Taranto to Bari is the battalion's documented route (ParaData).
• Home: "did some training on Yorkshire Moors and got ready for the 2nd Front. We stood by for Caen (cancelled), Rambouillet (cancelled), and then Arnhem" (p.6).
• ⚠️ Unplaced: "A thought on Syria. The Vichy French and the Foreign Legion surrendered to us" (p.9), followed by a drink with the enemy, a kick in the face, an MO's report, Brigade HQ and permission to grow a moustache. Syria surrendered in July 1941, when the service list has him on Crete or in Egypt; the 4th Parachute Brigade's Middle East period was 1943. Which visit this was, if either, is not known.

---

2. Chronology

2.1 Arnhem

The drop date. The 4th Para Bde lift was on the 18th (156 Bn history); Walsh's own MI9 answer gives 18 September; the compiler's preamble on his page adds Saltby, aircraft 628 and the 314th Troop Carrier Group. The service list ends Home service on 17 September and starts N/W Europe on the 18th. ParaData's 19th is wrong. The battalion war diary, WO 171/1247, would add the aircraft and the stick.

The wounding, and Lt Donaldson. Two accounts of the same minutes, written fifty-three years apart by men who did not know the other had written one.

Walsh, to MI9 in March 1945: at about midday on Thursday 21 September his company attacked a German machine-gun position near Oosterbeek; "I was beside Lt. DONALDSON my Platoon C.O. and Sjt. JOYCE"; a burst of fire hit Donaldson through the leg and arm, Joyce through the chest and Walsh in the scalp; "I then managed to get Lt. DONALDSON to a house about twenty yards to the rear … a few minutes later the Germans advanced and DONALDSON and I were taken prisoner … I have not heard of Lt. DONALDSON since, though I have a suspicion that he was shot. I had not gone more than 10 or 12 yards from the house where I left him before I heard a single shot which definitely came from that house" (Walsh).

Murphy, c.1998: "My Lt. Mr Donaldson was badly hit on the thigh, and I got help and took him into a house, and got him a drink. The Gerries came into the house, then ran out again. Mr Donaldson suggested we surrender, as we had no ammo, and/or head for the Rhine. Another soldier, Sam Welsh and I intended to carry the officer, but the Gerries appeared again and immediately shot Mr Donaldson behind the ear. They then marched us off through the village of Oosterbeek" (p.7).

Lt Donaldson: his grave, and the day he died

Lt William Stewart Donaldson commanded 11 Platoon, C Company. He is buried at Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery, plot 21, row B, grave 10; he was 25, the son of William and Lilian Donaldson and the husband of Geraldine (Jill) Donaldson of Wimbledon, and his family chose the inscription "In glorious memory of a most gallant gentleman and soldier".

◐ Most of the Commission's own records date his death to the 21st, not the 20th their website gives, and one records the cause as died of wounds rather than killed in action. The 21st is the day Walsh and Murphy both describe, and 21 September 1944 was a Thursday, which is what Walsh wrote. The five documents (and what each one is):

⚠️ Read the red ink carefully before leaning on this. The same records office wrote the 21st onto the concentration form and the 20th onto the headstone schedule, both in red pen; this is a clerk reconciling an unknown date against some other source, not a clean contest between typed fact and later scrawl. On the concentration form the annotator dated the other men individually too, giving Sgt Bruce the 20th on the line below, so they were working from something. What can be said plainly is that two records carry the 21st with no amendment at all — the 1956 registration form and the register printed for families — and that the 20th on the website survives from the amendment made when the stone was cut. Where the 21st came from, and what the clerk was reading, is a question for the Commission's enquiries desk.

Where he was first buried. Both concentration forms give the previous location as an isolated group of graves at Zonneheuvel, map reference 681785. Seven men were lifted from it together on 3 September 1945, three of them 156 Bn: Donaldson, Sgt G. Bruce and Pte H. W. Lewington.

⚠️ Grier's page has Grier and Pte Lewis Kemp carrying the fatally wounded Donaldson to safety in a blanket (Grier), and Powell's has him killed on the 20th (Powell). Neither is reconciled with the burial paperwork, §5.3. Every version agrees that Murphy and Walsh were the two men with him in that house, which is why they escaped Apeldoorn together a fortnight later.

Sgt Joyce, who did not die

⚠️ Walsh was wrong about Sgt Joyce, which is the measure to apply to the rest of his report, and to Murphy's. He wrote that Joyce was shot through the chest, that he gave him his morphia and that "he died shortly afterwards". Sgt Patrick Joyce, 4448773, survived: he is not a CWGC casualty, and two German POW cards hold him at Stalag 357, POW no. 50325 (WO 416/203/272, WO 416/365/298). That camp moved from Thorn to Fallingbostel in September 1944, next door to Murphy's XI-B, and both were liberated on the same morning (Wikipedia). ⚠️ The card's capture date of 19 September does not fit Walsh's 21st; German cards often record the date a man reached a collecting point rather than the day he was taken.

His own wound: "while sniping, a Gerry tank fired an 88 millimetre and I got shrapnel in my head. My jumping jacket was saturated and my face all pock-marked. I still don't know what happened to Sgt Shepley who was with me; I presume he got the full blast" (p.8). That is the "shotgun wounds to my head" of the notebook (notebook): shell splinters, not shot. The family can vouch for the splinters: they stayed in his head and face for the rest of his life, dark under the skin, and "pock marks" was the family's word for them, as it was his. ⚠️ Sgt Shepley is not identified. Hardy's report confirms both Murphy and Walsh were wounded men in the barracks (Hardy).

Before that: "I was designated as Sniper by Mr Powell. I despatched one Gerry sniper who was giving us trouble, and at one time was pursued by an armoured car; I don't know how they missed" (p.7). Maj. Geoffrey Powell commanded C Company (Powell). A mortar container "with our base plate and barrel was hit by the Gerries, and one of these landed on my foot"; a surgeon at the Southern General told him years later that what he took for a bunion "was related to the incident at Arnhem", and he wore surgical footwear (notebook). ⚠️ His word.

2.2 Captivity at Apeldoorn

Two facilities, easily confused:

1. Het Loo hospital, Apeldoorn. Walsh was held here from 22 September. Prisoners stripped and searched on arrival, uniforms confiscated and replaced with green field kit. Escape near-impossible: second floor, one guarded exit, no boots (Walsh).

2. Willem III Barracks, Apeldoorn, from about 2 October, a British hospital under RAMC administration (Col. Graeme Warrack, ADMS 1st Airborne Division). Warrack's page says it was converted "specifically for 1,700 airborne casualties"; Hardy's report puts about 1,000 wounded there. For the first five days the guard was Dutch SS, then older Wehrmacht men (Hardy). This is the building he escaped from.

Hardy: "During the ten days I was in the Barracks there were many men who escaped. I would estimate as many as 200 … I only know of ten men who were recaptured" (Hardy). Two methods predominated: hiding in the cookhouse block until dark, or being carried out on a stretcher as a corpse to the mortuary shed.

2.3 The escape: 6 October 1944

Corroborated by Walsh's report, by Dutch published history, and by the family account.

RSM Lionel Bryson (181 Airlanding Field Ambulance) had made clear that on escape it was every man for himself. At dusk on 6 October, Murphy and Walsh took a stretcher as camouflage and walked past the guard on their building as though carrying out an ordered task. They made for a disused building near the perimeter wire, lay up until dark, then slipped out and climbed over (Walsh).

The Dutch record has it too: "Ze zijn 6 oktober ontsnapt uit het Airborne Hospital in de Willem III-kazerne in Apeldoorn", they escaped on 6 October from the Airborne Hospital in the Willem III barracks (Airborne Magazine nr.27).

His own telling (pp.10–11), which matches Walsh's stretcher: "A truce was arranged, so a surgeon could come over from the British side and treat the wounded. I escaped by telling the guards I was going for a (dod kamarad); I lifted a stretcher and they let me pass. I went towards the wire, lay hidden on the grass, under the crow's nest, and when darkness came jumped over the wire. I remember singing, as I walked along a railway, it was freedom. Two Germans came testing the railway, on the contraption meant to clear it, for saboteurs, and paid me no heed. I was exhausted and climbed on a haystack, which had a canopy, and went to sleep. I slid down in the daylight and shocked a lady, hanging out her washing. I could see no telephone wires so knew I was OK. I did notice her boy had disappeared, the reason was obvious. Two gentlemen arrived, and you know the rest (I passed scrutiny)." ⚠️ The truce and the surgeon are his word; the crossing of the wire after dark is Walsh's too. The railway is the Apeldoorn–Amersfoort line the poultry farmer thought too close (§2.4).

The scrutiny: "the Underground, who gave me a going over, as Gerry was infiltrating their ranks, disguised as British paras. Questions such as where do Arsenal play, or Rangers, or Celtic, or Hearts, were asked of us till they were satisfied we were pukkah" (p.8). ◐ Hardy has "Derek" vetting the British at Elspeet with a paybook and questions about the Land Army (Hardy); the football questions are Murphy's.

2.4 On the run: the Dutch chain, October 1944 – January 1945

Eighty-eight days from the escape to the ferry crossing, and at least eleven households.

⚠️ Date discrepancy at Garderen. The MI9 reports put arrival at Garderen on 14 October after a week at Kootwijk. Airborne Magazine says "Omstreeks 8 oktober 1944 arriveren Samuel Walsh … en Thomas Murphy", about 8 October. The MI9 reports are contemporary; the Dutch article is 2023, reconstructed from the guestbook. The article also gives Murphy as "Bren gunner, C Coy" and Walsh as "HQ Coy, 2nd Parachute Battalion". Walsh's own report says he was "a Bren Gunner with C-Coy of the 156 Para Bn". The Dutch author had the names right and the wrong Walsh: ParaData carries a namesake, a Pte Samuel Walsh of HQ Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion, batman to Padre Egan, taken wounded on 17 September and never an evader (ParaData), and that is the unit the article gives. Murphy's Walsh is 4389317, a Green Howards number, of 156 Bn.

Contemporaneously corroborated. The Sunday Post of 29 April 1945 (scan) reports that "for ten days they were in a chicken coup surrounded by Nazis" and that they were fed by friends in the underground. That is Baron Mackay's estate, in print four days after he came home. Hardy's dates make it seven nights; the paper said ten. The same piece supplies a detail found nowhere else: to move about in civilian clothes with no Dutch, he and his companion pretended to be deaf and dumb (scan).

2.4a Garderen: Uncle Joop, De Ruif, and the Burgemeester

Uncle Joop is Dr Johannes Petrus Kruimel (born 23 April 1900, Bodjonegoro, East Java): orthopaedic surgeon at the St Joannes de Deo and St Antonius hospitals in Utrecht, with a country house, De Ruif, at Garderen. In the Veluwe pilot line from May 1943 under the codename "Oom Joop", introducing himself to evaders as "Joe Smith". He kept a guestbook at De Ruif in which the people he hid wrote farewell notes. Awarded the American Medal of Freedom on 12 March 1947, about which, per the note on his helper form, he was "unhelpful in producing any further information concerning his activities". He died on 23 May 1976, aged 76, and was buried privately at Garderen; the notice is datelined "De Ruif", so he was living in the rebuilt house at the end (Barneveldse Krant, 25 May 1976). A care home in Garderen, Dr. Kruimelstaete, was named after him in 2009 (Airborne Magazine nr.27; Omroep Gelderland; Elspeet history).

Thomas Murphy is named in that article. "Omstreeks 8 oktober 1944 arriveren Samuel Walsh … en Thomas Murphy … Ze zijn 6 oktober ontsnapt uit het Airborne Hospital in de Willem III-kazerne in Apeldoorn. Een paar dagen later komt Sergeant Harding van het 10th Parachute Battalion aan bij De Ruif. Vervolgens verschijnt Captain Alexander William Lipmann Kessel … Walsh en Murphy vertrekken op een gegeven moment omdat het te vol wordt.". Walsh and Murphy arrive; a few days later Sgt Harding; then Captain Lipmann Kessel; Walsh and Murphy leave at some point because it is getting too full. Walsh's report says they were moved "to make room for a party of six R.A.M.C. officers who were expected" (Walsh); the Dutch article names four who came.

Those were Capt. Alexander "Lippy" Lipmann Kessel, the Arnhem surgeon, author of Surgeon at Arms (1958; 2nd ed. 1974), with Lt Peter Allenby, S/Sgt Albert Allen and Maj. Cedric Longland of 16 Parachute Field Ambulance (Airborne Magazine; Kessel; ParaData, Kessel; Longland). ⚠️ Kessel's book may mention Murphy and Walsh; not yet checked.

⚠️ On the guestbook. Noordman, who worked from it, warns that a name in the De Ruif guestbook does not mean the man was housed at De Ruif, most were placed at farms round about, and "een aantal para's verbleven er enige dagen in het najaar van 1944" (a number of paras stayed there a few days in the autumn of 1944) (Omroep Gelderland). Whether Murphy himself signed it is not known (§9).

The magazine prints one spread of it from that month (the two pages, image via Noordman): two Halifax airmen dated 12 October 1944, then Allenby, Kessel, Longland and Allen of 16 Parachute Field Ambulance, who arrived as Murphy and Walsh left, and nothing after Allen. Murphy and Walsh are not on it. ◐ If they came on the 14th, as the MI9 reports have it, a note from them would be expected between the airmen and the medics, and there is none; if they came about the 8th, as the magazine has it, it would be on the page before, which was not printed. So the question for Noordman is the page before 12 October.

The Burgemeester is Jonkheer Hubert Louis Marie van Nispen tot Sevenaer (1879–1958), mayor of Laren, near Amsterdam, as Walsh's report says, from 1909 to 1943 and again 1945–46. He refused to co-operate with the NSB administration, escaped an arrest attempt on the night of 8/9 February 1943, and went into hiding with his family. He lost everything in the war (Wikipedia). Murphy names him himself: "Mr Van Nispen Van Sevenaar, who was once Burgemeister von Amsterdam" (Stalag p.1; the typed copy has "Sevenaar who was on Burgemeister").

The burning of De Ruif, 23 October 1944. Germans quartered at Elspeet came to Garderen to requisition a car. That afternoon Van Nispen's son had lit a fire in the hideout under the stable. When the Germans inspected it they found a transmitter and a pilot's equipment. They razed the house with fire and hand grenades, after first "securing" the furniture, glassware, paintings, crystal and silver. The Van Nispens escaped (Airborne Magazine).

✅ Van Nispen told the story himself six months later, and a Laren paper printed it: Kruimel made the Garderen house available in December 1943, and "as a result the Grüne Polizei honoured the Van Nispen family with a visit on 23 October". He then went into hiding at Apeldoorn and his son at Achterveld, the village where Murphy would spend his month with the Veermans (Tijding, 17 May 1945; see the note). It is a contemporary Dutch source for a date the file otherwise takes from a 2023 magazine.

Murphy and Walsh had left two days earlier: "About 21 Oct it was arranged that we should move" (Walsh).

Tex Banwell was also at De Ruif, from after 30 September to 22 October (Airborne Magazine), see §6.

2.4b Elspeet: "Derek", Sterrehoveke, and the Van Eysingas

"Derek" is Dirk van Eysinga, who lived during the war with freule Ima van Eysinga at Sterrehoveke on the Krommesteeg in Elspeet. With Dr Kruimel and Huib de Jongh he hid weapons there, and, with her knowledge, onderduikers, pilots, paratroopers and escaped doctors. He was a member of the Veluwe pilot organisation (PTO) set up after Market Garden under the MI9 agent Dick Kragt ("Frans Hals") and the Jewish onderduiker Joop Piller ("Joop van Amstel"). After the war he became Dutch ambassador to Romania. He died at 63 (Elspeet history, citing Jeanne Dijkstra, Elspeet, baken van verzet (Barneveld, 2017)).

⚠️ The household. Hardy calls the old lady Derek's great-aunt; the Dutch sources call her his aunt ("tante Ima"). Hardy's "niece, a lady of about 40" is the other woman of the house. The Dutch sources name Liesbeth Verweij. Omroep Gelderland calls her Ima van Eysinga's gouvernante (governess), Airborne Magazine her gezelschapsdame (companion) — who wrote an account of the household, Spannende tijden op en rond Sterrehoveke, which Airborne Magazine calls never-published herinneringen (recollections) and Omroep Gelderland a dagboek (diary). That Verweij is Hardy's "niece" is an inference from the household composition; neither Dutch source calls her a relative.

Thomas Murphy is named in that account. Wolter Noordman, who worked from the Van Eysinga family archive: "Het ging hierbij om ontsnapten uit de Koning Willem III-kazerne, zoals John Haller, Tom Murphy, James Hardy, Sammy Walsh, Lipmann-Kessel, Cerediq Longland, Allenby en Allan.", escapers from the Willem III barracks such as John Haller, Tom Murphy, James Hardy, Sammy Walsh, Lipmann Kessel, Cedric Longland, Allenby and Allen (Omroep Gelderland).

So two Dutch published accounts, one built on the De Ruif guestbook and one on the Sterrehoveke recollections, record him by name in October 1944.

2.5 Operation Pegasus II: 17/18 November 1944

Actual operation date: night of 17/18 November 1944 (Liberation Route). The memoir gives 20 November, which is wrong, though not randomly so (see below).

Four young resistance men arrived on bicycles at about 1830 on 17 November. The party rode tandem: Hardy with P/O Brentford, Banwell with Murphy, the sergeant glider pilot "John" (Haller) and Walsh on guides' bikes. All three guides drew too far ahead; at a fork, Banwell, Brentford, Murphy and Hardy took the wrong turning and lost the party. They waited half an hour, then searched for two or three hours whistling the recognition signal, the first two bars of Lili Marlene, with no response (Hardy).

⚠️ The two reports disagree about which side of the split Murphy was on, and Walsh says so himself. Walsh writes that his account is identical to Hardy's "except for one detail": that after Hardy and Brentford were lost, the guides took Banwell, Haller, Murphy and Walsh on to a house at 560984 (Walsh). Hardy has Murphy in the lost group with him. Hardy is the likelier, because he describes Murphy continuously afterwards. Not settled.

Pegasus II failed. Of 116 participants, seven reached the south bank. Two participants and one American rescuer were killed; a Dutch guide died of injuries days later; one man went missing and was never found. 48 were captured, twelve of them wounded, and three of those were unmasked as resistance men and executed at the Woeste Hoeve on 8 March 1945. The other 64 got away and went back into hiding (Liberation Route). The figure the evaders themselves were given at the time was smaller: Kessel, hidden on the Veluwe that week, heard from Dick Kragt that London reported "only five men had got through", and later "a few had been killed and several wounded, but the majority had been recaptured, only a handful having managed to slip away like we had" (Kessel, pp. 137, 152). Because Murphy did not appear at the rendezvous he was reported missing in German hands, and the date the Army subsequently recorded as his death was 20 November 1944 (Record Office letter).

Subsequent attempts (Hardy):

• 18 Nov: at 1730 "WILLEM and the Dutch Policeman whom I had met before" arrived with bicycles; a second try from a farm near Otterlo; joined a party of about 20 evaders (including Pte Leslie Davison and Pte Frederick Moore); the lorry never came.
• 20 Nov: Banwell chose to remain with the larger party. Murphy went on with Hardy, Brentford, Haller and Walsh. Dug-out near Roekel, ten men in it. ✅ Moore's page has the same hole: "hidden in a dug-out at Roekel. After three days spent in great discomfort Moore returned alone to Barneveld" (Moore).
• 24 Nov: Hardy and Murphy left for the Otterlo farmhouse, then a barn.
• 25 Nov: with Davison, cycled pannier-fashion towards Barneveld. Guides "Ghys" and "Jan (3)".

2.6 Achterveld: the month in hiding

Hardy's report (source):

The owner of the farm was called Jacob VEERMAN, aged 43, married, with four daughters and three sons, the eldest a girl of 17 named JOANNA and the youngest a boy of 5 named YAP.

— at a farm "at approximately map position 475955 near ACHTERVELD".

The family is identified from Dutch sources. Jacob Veerman, born 3 August 1900 in Den Haag, farmed Klein Achterveld on the road between Achterveld and Barneveld and was a member of the OD (Ordedienst) in Barneveld. He left a wife and seven children (Neuengamme monument, quoting Huurdeman). The eldest daughter was Johanna Maria "Jopie" Veerman, born 1 December 1927 in Achterveld (TracesOfWar), she turned seventeen while Murphy and Hardy were on the farm. Surname, place, the number of children, and the eldest daughter's name and age all agree; the four-daughters-three-sons split is Hardy's alone.

The civil registers fill the family in (the records). Jacob was born in Den Haag on 3 August 1900 to Leendert Veerman, a shopkeeper, and Johanna Maria Kok; the family moved by way of Ede to Barneveld. He married at Barneveld on 2 February 1927, as a farmer, Aaltje Bakker, 22, born at Landsmeer, daughter of Jan Bakker and Maretje de Vries; Jopie was born ten months later and carries her grandmother's names. Two things happened in the house while Murphy was there or just after: his mother had died on 23 June 1944, and his father Leendert died at Barneveld on 10 January 1945, a week after Murphy was recaptured and a fortnight before the SD came for Jacob. His brothers were Arie, a bookkeeper when he married in 1924, and Leendert Jan, a bicycle repairer in 1931.

◐ One of those brothers was in Neuengamme too. Jacob's granddaughter Alie, at the camp in May 2024: "Ook de broer van mijn opa en zijn neef herdenken we hier", we also remember my grandfather's brother and his nephew here; "all three had to work under the terrible conditions in the camp" (RTV Utrecht). Neither is on the Neuengamme monument, which lists the dead, so both came home; neither is in Kamp Amersfoort's register under Veerman, so they went by another route. ⚠️ Which brother, when he was taken and why is not yet known. It bears directly on Murphy's "the Germans rounded up the Uncle and others" (§6): an uncle of Jopie's was taken. The cause is another matter, and the family also holds Jacob's farewell letter from Kamp Amersfoort, which was read aloud at the Cap Arcona commemoration that day.

The farm had sheltered Allied aircrew since 1943, brought in by Jan Dijkstra of De Glind; the Dutch account records three pairs of airmen, along with "various onderduikers, among them a Jewish woman and her daughter", and states that everyone hidden there survived the war. It names none of the Allied evaders and calls them all "pilots" (Neuengamme monument).

Murphy and Hardy stayed a full month, approximately 25 November to 23 December 1944. Hardy records that they were very well fed and cared for (Hardy).

The revolver. Hardy: "MURPHY's given him by Jacob VEERMAN" (Hardy). ⚠️ Murphy says otherwise three times, consistently: it came from a Dutch policeman in the family, "Jo Veerman's uncle" (p.6; typed), and, on the Banwell page, "Mr Veerman's Brother, who was in the Dutch Police" (ms), the same man. Jacob had two brothers, Arie and Leendert Jan, and the marriage registers give their trades: bookkeeper and bicycle repairer (the records). ⚠️ Those are the trades of 1924 and 1931, not 1944, so neither is ruled out, but neither is a policeman on paper; a brother-in-law would fit Murphy's words as well. Hardy separately mentions an unnamed Dutch policeman in that network. ◐ The "oom Gerrit" at Ede that Jopie hid with (Neuengamme monument) is not one of Jacob's brothers. He now has a candidate: Gerrit Jan Broekhuis, a baker, who married Jacob's sister Jansje Maria in 1940 and whose own sister had married Leendert Jan Veerman in 1931, so an uncle by marriage twice over. Where he lived in 1945 is not recorded in what has been found; the two Gerrit Bakkers in Ede's registers are not Aaltje's family and were ruled out. Murphy's version is the more specific; Hardy's is the contemporary one. Unresolved.

What happened to the Veermans afterwards

All from the Neuengamme monument (quoting Huurdeman) and TracesOfWar (citing Van Doorn & Sennema) unless stated.

Jacob Veerman was arrested by the SD on 24 January 1945. They had come for Jopie, who was doing courier work; she was hiding with her uncle Gerrit in Ede, so they took her father and put it about that he would be released if she gave herself up. She did. He was not released. Interrogated at Apeldoorn, held at the Sipo prison on the Weteringschans in Amsterdam, moved to Kamp Amersfoort on 6 March 1945, on to KZ Neuengamme, arriving 18 March. On 3 May 1945 he was aboard the Cap Arcona in the Lübecker Bucht when British aircraft attacked the prisoner ships. Over 9,000 prisoners were aboard the three vessels and over 7,000 died (KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme); the Cap Arcona was hit with rockets, caught fire and sank, and he drowned (Neuengamme monument). That was five days before the German surrender, and the day after the Record Office wrote to Kelty. He left a wife and seven children.

✅ Two official records now stand behind that. Kamp Amersfoort's own prisoner register has him, the only Jacob Veerman among its 47,000 names (register). And the Dutch state's roll of honour, the Erelijst van Gevallenen 1940–1945, kept in the Tweede Kamer, carries him on page 727: "Veerman, Jacob, 's-Gravenhage 3·VIII·1900, Landbouwer, Lübeckerbocht 3·V·1945", in the group Verzet, resistance (entry; the page). The Dutch public read of the sinking within weeks: Het Parool on 4 June 1945 and Het Vrije Volk on the 6th (Delpher, not archived). In the last days of April, while he was at Neuengamme, the Allied and German delegations that negotiated the food drops for the starving west met in a school in Achterveld, his own village, with Prince Bernhard on one side and Seyss-Inquart on the other (Nederland Vrij, 5 May 1945).

This bears on the interrogation. The family account has Murphy giving away nothing under threat of execution. The Dutch record gives the reason for the Veerman arrest as the hunt for Jopie as a courier, by a different arm of the security apparatus three weeks later, with no mention of an evasion line. That is consistent with his silence, though it does not prove it.

Johanna Maria "Jopie" Veerman (married name Vanhaelen, 1 December 1927 – 9 September 1977) was one of the 116 women of the Vrouwenmars. They were brought to Kamp Westerbork between 21 March and 6 April 1945 from four SD prisons; about 75 of them, from Putten, Barneveld, Ermelo, Ede and round about, came via the Willem III Kazerne at Apeldoorn, the barracks Murphy had escaped from four months earlier (TracesOfWar). ⚠️ That she was among the Apeldoorn group is an inference from where she lived; the source says only "Jopie belandde in Kamp Westerbork". On 11 April 1945 the 116 were marched out of Westerbork, three nights on foot under guard, and liberated near Grijpskerk on 14 April (Stichting Vrouwenmars 1945), two days before Murphy. She came home ill in May 1945 and died at 49. Her family has published a photograph of her, a young woman with a bicycle, credited to Jacques Vanhaelen.

The Stichting's own list of the 116, in march order, has her at number 10: Johanna Maria (Jopie), getrouwd Anwert / Vanhaelen, meisjesnaam Veerman, Achterveld (the list, March 2026). ⚠️ Anwert is a second married surname that nothing else here explains. Three women from the villages either side of the Veerman farm are on the same list: Jo Klooster-Kohnhorst of Barneveld at number 2 — ◐ the surname of the household where "Ape" was taken on 8 December 1944, though the list is no proof they are the same family — "A. Houtman" of Barneveld at 11, and "Tante Jacqui" Kuyck of Garderen at 12.

✅ Her death notice in the Barneveldse Krant of 12 September 1977 gives the rest of her life (the notice; scan). She married a Belgian, Jean-Baptiste Vanhaelen, and lived at Lembeek, near Halle south of Brussels, where she was buried on 14 September 1977. Three children signed it, Jacques, Jan and Marianne, and a grandchild, David; Jacques is the son who has published her photograph. It also names "Mijnheer en mevrouw Vaarkamp-Bakker, haar ouders", her parents: Aaltje Bakker, Jacob's widow, had remarried, and the notice's Dutch address is H. Vaarkamp, Stationsweg 165, Barneveld. So the "Jo Veerman and her husband" who came to Scotland in 1975 (§2.12) were the Vanhaelens, from Belgium.

2.7 Amerongen: December 1944 to January 1945

From Hardy:

• 23 December, c.1400: "Jan (3)" moved them on; bicycles at Ghys's house; rode with "Han" to Amerongen, arriving about 1630. Met Capt. V. R. Schjelderup MC (1st Bn The Canadian Scottish Regiment), CSM Berry, and another Canadian Scottish private.
• After dark, a young man took them to his father's house in Amerongen: "His father is a garage proprietor, named Gerald ESVELD, a married man" with two sons, "Koen" and "Beent", and a daughter.

Coen and Berend Esveld of Amerongen are documented on the Dutch side. Coen Esveld, with Chris Cornelisse, ran evaders across on the Amerongen–Eck en Wiel ferry, three parties of six; his brother Berend, resistance name "Flip", went on one run. On the third crossing two Germans boarded at the last moment and began eyeing the evaders' British boots — "de Nederlanders al sinds lang geen schoenen meer hadden kunnen kopen"; Coen said "Jij die en ik die" and the two of them put the Germans over the side. That ended the ferry crossings (Geschiedenis Magazine). The Dutch source does not mention a father or a garage; the identification of Hardy's "Koen" and "Beent" with Coen and Berend rests on surname, place and first names.

Murphy's crossing on 2 January went off without difficulty, so it was not that run.

The house from the inside. Porter's party of seven Canadians reached Amerongen before Christmas, and his chapter 5 names where they were put: "Roger and I were taken into the house of Cornelissen … their sixteen year old teenage daughter could speak a little. Her name was Nellie", "two of the other fellows were taken to the family Esveld and the three others to the family of Hoogland. Our hosts were farmers and had enough food put away to feed us" (Porter, pp. 136–137), with photographs of the Cornelissens and of Nellie. Christmas Day: Berry and Brierre had "a Christmas tree for the little girl who lived in the house. Wilf, who was the Sergeant Major, had a Sten gun wrapped up under the tree" (p. 138). Then, between Christmas and New Year's Eve: "We met a couple of British paratroopers from the Arnhem airborne drop. They were also getting fed up and were very anxious to get back … We met an English Private, a Sergeant and a Captain, (who was also a Medical Doctor Paratrooper,) who were also going to go with us" (p. 139). ◐ Porter names none of them, but the party that set out on 2 January had exactly one captain who was a doctor (Noble), one British sergeant (Banwell) and two British privates (Hardy, who was English, and Murphy), so this is the three men lost on the 3rd, seen a week before, and it puts Murphy's Esvelds in the same street as the Cornelissens who hid Porter. ⚠️ Whether the "couple of British paratroopers" are the same men as the trio or two more is not clear from the text.

Kessel crossed from the same village six weeks later, in February 1945, and his account of that night is the only description found of what the crossing meant in that winter: a manure boat "moored fast in the ice of a pond, a good half-mile from the Rhine", the guides smashing the ice with the oars, and the boat dragged over frozen furrows to the river (Kessel, pp. 187–188). Murphy's party had the ferry, and ten cents.

Murphy names the family himself: "To conclude, I stayed with the Esveldt family in Amerongen, near the Rhine. I put on overalls over my uniform, supplied by the family, got over the Rhine by ferry, but ran into a Jerry patrol, and was lucky not to get shot, as there were a few Jerry corpses lying about, after a night raid by British troops" (p.12). ✅ Surname, town, the overalls and the ferry all match Hardy's report, written before Murphy was home. Before that, "I helped with small arms and ammo, dropped by the RAF. We were ordered to lie doggo, by the Officer i/c of paras in hiding, as any action meant reprisals to Dutch people" (same page).

2.8 The crossing and recapture: 2/3 January 1945

From Hardy and the Schjelderup extract on the same page:

• 1300, 2 Jan: left by bicycle with Koen and "Keek" for the ferry. Civilian suits lent by Koen, uniforms in bags strapped to the cycles. Crossed without difficulty. Schjelderup: "We crossed the RHINE by ferry … by paying 10 cents."
• Cycled to Kesteren; met Banwell again, Sgt Gri, and Canadian Scottish men. Joined by seven more evaders.
• 1830: "11 Allied personnel, DERRICK, and 2 other Dutchmen" set off on foot across the frozen, flooded Betuwe.

Schjelderup's nominal list runs: Schjelderup, CSM W. Berry, Sgt A. Gri MM, Sgt R. E. Porter RCAF, Pte H. Swartz, Pte M. Brierre, Pte L. F. Trainor, a Polish soldier, Pte Hardy, Pte T. Murphy, 156 Para Bn, Capt. Noble (133 Fd Amb), Sgt K. Banwell (10 Bn).

• c.2100: a German patrol; the party froze, then pushed on. Later, on a road, fired on at very close range with automatic weapons; the party scattered. "We lost, and never saw again, one Dutchman and the following three men: Capt. NOBLE, Sgt. TEX (?) [Banwell], Pte. MURPHY." CSM Berry badly wounded in the left elbow.
• Fired on again from three positions with Bren guns and British mortar flares, captured Allied kit, the likely reason Murphy believed he was approaching Canadians.
• Only Schjelderup, Gri and Hardy reached the Recce Regiment, 49th Division, near Dodewaard. Hardy was awarded the Military Medal, the citation noting that "he went out alone under fire on to the ice".

Capt. Charles Noble's report (Noble, written 23 September 1945) is the third account of the night, from a man who was caught. He was told on 2 January that he "and 12 escapees were being taken through the line that night", a "joint British-Underground enterprise" with a British patrol to meet them; crossed by the Amerongen ferry at 4 p.m. "in civilian clothes over uniform"; assembled at "a farm house or brick factory building about 300 yards West of the RHENEN bridge"; the party included "one or two German deserters and Poles and 2 Dutchmen"; a German patrol passed and the second-stage guide was lost; at about 11 p.m. they reached "the brick factory on the river bank opposite WAGENINGEN"; a mile south, on the main east–west road, "at about 20 yards range a machine-gun opened up, after a challenge. The party scattered and we rolled off the road down the dyke." Noble hid in a hollow tree, was challenged by a sentry, answered "Heil Hitler", ran, and was surrounded in a flooded field under flares: "I made 3 attempts to reach the Southern end, but the Germans gradually closed in and I found myself inside a ring of Germans without any cover … I surrendered." He adds that a British patrol did come out to the bridge before dawn on the 3rd, and "One of the prisoners taken on it later told me that 8 were killed and 3 captured". ⚠️ That patrol and its losses are Noble's hearsay from another prisoner; not yet checked against 49th Division records. His questionnaire says he was captured "with 8 people".

The Dutch side has the same night, told from the guide. A local-history page on Adriaan Maljers, the Betuwe resistance man who led the party, gives a reconnaissance on 1 January, the Rhine crossed "in small groups of two at a time", assembly at the brickworks at Lienden, a Dutch guide who vanished mid-route "together with a Pole in hiding", and then: "De groep wist ongeveer twee kilometer ten noorden van Opheusden te komen. Daar werd besloten de dijk op te gaan. Plotseling werd vanaf korte afstand het vuur geopend … De Duitsers gebruikten lichtkogels om het terrein te verlichten", the group got to about two kilometres north of Opheusden, decided to go up on the dyke, and fire was opened at short range; the Germans used flares. It names the men who lost their comrades in the chaos: "Onder die parachutisten bevonden zich Thomas Murphy van het 156th Parachute Battalion, Captain Charles B. Noble van de 133rd Parachute Field Ambulance en Sergeant Keith D. Banwell van het 10th Parachute Battalion" (Maljers). ⚠️ The page says its names come "uit Canadese en Britse bronnen", so this is the MI9 reports read back into Dutch, not an independent record of him. What is independent is Maljers's own story: captured near Opheusden station, "samen met enkele geallieerden naar Velp gebracht" (taken to Velp with some of the Allied men), interrogated and tortured there, then "Na ongeveer drie weken werd Maljers samen met zeven geallieerde militairen naar de gevangenis Wolvenplein in Utrecht gebracht … De groep werd later naar De Kruisberg in Doetinchem gebracht", after about three weeks moved with seven Allied soldiers to the Wolvenplein prison in Utrecht, and later to De Kruisberg at Doetinchem. That is Noble's route to the day, §2.9.

A fourth account, from the Canadian airman in the party. F/Sgt Bob Porter, RCAF, published The Long Return in 1997; the chapters are online as scans and the passages that bear on this file are transcribed with page numbers in the archive (Porter). At the brickworks on the evening of 2 January: "There were seven of us plus the three paratroopers. Later another five plus our guides came along, making nineteen of us. No one introduced anyone" (p. 142). The three paratroopers with the Utrecht party of seven are Hardy, Murphy and Banwell. The guide was "Dirk" (p. 143), which is Schjelderup's "DERRICK". A cyclist saw them on the road, "suddenly there was a shout and machine gun fire" (p. 145); Porter ran with CSM Berry, who "had been shot in the arm" (p. 146); they hid in a fruit shed and were taken on 3 January by Wehrmacht troops, who gave Porter wooden shoes and soup, before "the Field Army Police (Feld-Gendarmerie) soon took over" (p. 149). ⚠️ Porter's "four or five of our group had been killed" (p. 148) is what the Germans told him; the MI9 reports record one man wounded, and Noble's "8 killed" belongs to the British patrol the next morning, not the party.

How he was taken, two accounts, both his. The Sunday Post of 29 April 1945 (scan), four days after he came home, says they "were recaptured when swimming across the Rhine in the hope of meeting British soldiers a few miles away". His typed notes, fifty years later (typed pp.1–3), say the party scattered under fire, that he and "my new found mate" took refuge in brickwork, that "a Gerry patrol must have seen us get in and machine gunned and threw bombs", that they came to in a house to hear German voices next door, that a German kicked in the shutter and went for his holster and Murphy "restrained his hand", and that "from there we were escorted back over the Ferry". ⚠️ Swimming and being taken in a house are not the same event. The newspaper line is a reporter's sentence, and its geography is loose: the party had crossed the Rhine by ferry the day before (§2.7) and the Allied lines were beyond the Waal. His own account fits Schjelderup's and Hardy's: fired on at close range, the party scattered, on the flooded, frozen Betuwe where Hardy himself swam a canal. The 1945 account is the contemporary one, but second-hand. Unresolved on the detail; both agree he was taken trying to reach the British lines.

2.9 Recapture, interrogation, captivity

From the memoirs (typed pp.1–3; notes; ms), now read beside the one contemporary account from inside the same net, Capt. Noble's (Noble). Noble never names Murphy, so nothing below is ✅ for Murphy personally; where Noble describes the same treatment of the same group it is marked ◐. Everything else is ⚠️ his word alone, see §12.

• Taken prisoner having escaped from a POW hospital and carrying a revolver, and treated as a spy. He writes that he "still had my uniform but wore overalls which I could shed on being caught" (notes), so not plain civilian clothes.
• Interrogated at what he calls "GWELF Headquarters of the Gerry Army for that area". ◐ Velp. Noble, taken in the same action, was "taken to the RHQ and from there sent to Div HQ, Counter Intelligence at VELP, having been captured in civilian clothes"; his questionnaire answer on where he was interrogated is "Arnhem (Velp, 1st Parachute Div, Counter Intelligence)" (Noble). Banwell was interrogated at Velp too (Banwell; Tiemens). Murphy has Banwell beside him at the capture. Two of the three are documented at Velp; "GWELF" is his spelling of it. Velp was where the SD held and questioned people: Rauter's SD prison occupied the seized Rotterdamsche Bank on the Hoofdstraat from November 1944 to April 1945, with the SD headquarters in the villa Den Heuvel and cells and interrogation rooms in the villa De Kleiberg (Wikipedia NL); a plaque on the bank reads "TER HERINNERING AAN ALLE GEVALLENEN VAN DE DUITSE BEZETTER IN DE ROTTERDAMSCHE BANK NOVEMBER 1944 – APRIL 1945" (4 en 5 mei). The guide Maljers was taken there "with some of the Allied men" (Maljers). ⚠️ No document places Murphy himself there by name.
• Identity cards. His was No. 12, and read "SPIONE VOORSICHT / NOCH NICH VERHOORT" (Spione, Vorsicht, noch nicht verhört: spy, caution, not yet interrogated). The medical officer with him was No. 11 with the same marking. ◐ That officer is very probably Capt. Noble of 133 Field Ambulance: Schjelderup lost exactly three men in the firefight, "Capt. NOBLE, Sgt. TEX (?) [Banwell], Pte. MURPHY" (§2.8), Murphy says Banwell was there when he was captured ("When we were captured, he told the Germans I had a gun", ms), and Noble is the only medical officer among the three. Murphy never names him.
• "We were interrogated, sometimes marched under armed escort at 2 or 3 in the morning, and told we were to be shot." ◐ Noble, on the same capture: "For the next 8 weeks I was kept in strict solitary confinement, the last 5½ weeks being in the Gestapo Prison at Utrecht and Doetinchem. Interrogation was intensive during the first 2 weeks"; and in his questionnaire, "Methods: Prolonged questioning. Threatening." His dates: Gestapo prison Utrecht 18 January to 7 February 1945, Doetinchem 7 to 25 February, then "Dulag, Stalag XIB Falingbostel" from 28 February (Noble). ◐ The Dutch side has the group moving together: Maljers "with seven Allied soldiers" from Velp to the Wolvenplein prison in Utrecht after about three weeks, then to De Kruisberg at Doetinchem (Maljers). Noble is on the Doetinchem memorial foundation's list of Allied prisoners of De Kruisberg, "Charles Noble, Britse arts" (Doetinchem Herdenkt), which describes the place: "Van 5 september 1944 tot 27 maart 1945 hield de Sicherheitsdienst honderden mensen gevangen op De Kruisberg: mannen en vrouwen uit het verzet en geallieerde militairen". A Canadian airman held there in December 1944 called it "an S.D. special prison for transients going to GERMANY" (Warren). Porter has the same road from inside it: "a day or so" near the front, then "Wilf, Louis, Harvey, Marcel Briere, the Army Doctor and myself were taken to Arnhem" and held "in a house that the Germans had taken over" (p. 151); "They kept referring to us as spies and threatened to shoot us many times. They always let us know that we had no rights under the Geneva Convention" (p. 155); interrogation "at three or four o'clock in the morning" (p. 157); "a week or so" at Arnhem, then "a big prison in Utrecht called 'Wolvenplein Prison' where we were very well guarded, one for each of us … run by the German SS" (p. 159); "at least three weeks" there (p. 162); then Doetinchem, "the end of January" (p. 165) (Porter). ⚠️ But Porter also sets the limit of what can be claimed for Murphy. After the ambush he saw Berry, Trainor, Swartz, Brierre and "the doctor from the Army", and "we didn't see any of the others" (p. 150); he never mentions Murphy or Banwell again. So the Velp house, the Wolvenplein and De Kruisberg are documented for five Canadians, Noble and the guide. Murphy is not on the Kruisberg list, which is a handful of names out of hundreds; he names neither prison; and nobody who was in them says he was. That he was one of Maljers's "seven Allied soldiers" fits the numbers (five Canadians, Noble, and one of Murphy or Banwell) and fits his own "marched under armed escort at 2 or 3 in the morning", which is Porter's "three or four o'clock" from the same weeks. It is a reading, not a record. The other Allied names on the Kruisberg list are not from the party: Peter Whittaker was an RAF sergeant, 1537036, hidden with a resistance group near Markelo and put on the 2 February 1945 transport to Neuengamme (Doetinchem Herdenkt).
• Interrogator named as Lieutenant Heweke, who "kept trying to trap me by asking how I survived from September until January. I kept telling him I lived in the woods and stole food to survive."
• Gave away nothing about the organisation. Not provable from a document, but consistent with everything on record: the Esvelds, Cornelisse and the guides were not arrested, the Veerman raid three weeks later was for Jopie as a courier (§2.6), and the interrogator's line of questioning, as he reports it, was still trying to find out how he had survived.
• "Shotgun wounds to the head", untreated (notebook). Explained by his own p.8: shell splinters from an 88 mm round while sniping at Arnhem (§2.1), carried untreated through the whole evasion.
• The interrogator is "Lieutenant Heweke" in the notes and "Mr Hencke" in the memoir (p.8), the same man, spelt from memory.
• The "Tody Organisation" pressganging workers. Organisation Todt, which used forced labour on a vast scale (Wikipedia).

The German side. No German document about Murphy has been found: his POW card is not among the 232 Murphy cards in WO 416 (§7.1), and the SD's own files from Velp did not survive in German hands. What does survive is the policy, in the orders the Nuremberg prosecution put in evidence against Keitel, and it describes his situation. A Keitel order of about September 1942 "provided that captured paratroopers were to be turned over to the SD" (553-PS); the Commando Order of 18 October 1942 (498-PS) was reaffirmed on 25 June 1944 after Normandy, when it had "become difficult to decide which paratroops should be considered sabotage troops under the terms of the order, and which should be considered as engaged in normal combat operations" (531-PS, 551-PS); and under the order that sent recaptured escapers of other nations to Mauthausen to be killed, "Americans and British who were recaptured might be turned over to the SIPO and SD, upon decision of the 'W.Kdos' from the OKW" (L-158) (Nuremberg summary, the US prosecution's volume, which cites the documents by number). ✅ That is the machinery. An escaped British paratrooper, recaptured in civilian clothes over uniform, armed with a Dutch police revolver, in a party that included a man in radio contact with an SAS officer, was exactly the case those orders left to the SD's discretion, which is where Noble's "Div HQ, Counter Intelligence at VELP" and the Gestapo prisons put him. ⚠️ It explains the treatment he and Noble describe; it is not a record of it.

2.10 Liberation: April 1945

Camp: Stalag XI-B, Fallingbostel, his own typed notes: "STALAG 11 B - FALLINBOSTEL" (typed pp.1–3). This corrects the family's long reading of "Stalag II-B", which is Hammerstein in Pomerania (Wikipedia).

⚠️ Arnhem prisoners are documented at the adjacent Stalag 357 (Oerbke), where they arrived in November 1944 under RSM John Lord (Wikipedia). Murphy was taken in January, not September, so he need not have gone with them; his own note says XI-B and is the only evidence.

Liberation: 16 April 1945, by B Squadron 11th Hussars and the Reconnaissance Troop of the 8th Hussars, met at the gate of Stalag 357 by "a guard of Airborne troops, impeccably attired and led by RSM Lord" (Wikipedia). "The total freed from Stalags XIB and 357 was some 10,000 British and American prisoners, and 12,000 Allied nationals" (The Arrowhead Club). Bergen-Belsen was liberated the day before, 15 April 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division (Wikipedia); ⚠️ the distance between the two sites, about 30 km, is not in either source. The memoir's dogs carrying human arms is his word alone; the geography makes it possible.

His own account: "I was released from Stalag by the 7th Armoured Div. That was in April, so from February (I think) when I was captured [struck out, "released" written beneath], on April, I lost 2½ stone, and it took a long time to regain my appetite" (p.9). ✅ The 11th Hussars who reached the Fallingbostel camps were 7th Armoured Division's (Arrowhead Club). ◐ "February": he was captured in January, and his own typed notes say so, but Noble, taken in the same net, reached Stalag XI-B on 28 February after eight weeks in German hands in Holland (Noble). Read as the month he arrived at the camp, which is where the 2½ stone came off, "from February" is right. ⚠️ Murphy's own route between 3 January and the camp is undocumented.

"I've omitted the gruesome details, but the worst I seen, was when I was liberated, and went down the road to Belsen camp. It was horrendous (man's inhumanity to man). Amputations were many; I saw a dog run past me with an arm in its mouth" (p.10). The notebook adds: "Fallingbostel was only a short walk to Belsen camp and what I saw there, still stays with me. They even brought around 20 Jews into our camp one cold morning, and hosed them down, naked. I just hid there and watched" (notebook). ⚠️ His word. "A short walk" is not right, the sites are about 30 km apart, but the two camps were liberated a day apart by the same army and the road between them was open.

He arrived in the United Kingdom on 25 April 1945 (Record Office letter).

2.11 Killed on paper: the death notification

The letter, A.A.C., A.C.C. & G.S.C. Record Office, East Claremont Street, Edinburgh, to Mr J. Murphy, 91 Centre Street, Kelty:

2756457 Pte. MURPHY Thomas, A.A.C. — Reference previous notification dated 18th April 1945, reporting your son as having died on 20th November 1944, whilst a Prisoner of War. I am pleased to inform you that official information has today been received in this office to the effect that the above named soldier arrived in the United Kingdom on 25th April 1945. Will you, therefore, please return the Death Notification sent you on 18th April 1945; a stamped addressed envelope is enclosed for the purpose.

What his parents were told, in order (Sunday Post). First that he was slightly wounded and captured; then missing; then missing and wounded; then safe in Dutch hands; then that he had died of wounds in a German prison camp. A man in Doncaster picked up a wireless message from Germany saying Thomas was alive and well. Then came a padre's letter saying he had been buried by the German authorities in November. Then a liberated soldier from Glencraig, a Fife village two miles from Kelty, told them their son had been freed alongside him. A telegram sent them to Edinburgh, where they found no trace of him. They came home to Kelty to find a telegram waiting, from Thomas.

⚠️ He also recalled that his mother drew his life insurance on his death certificate (notes), his word; the death notice itself is documented.

2.12 After the war

• Discharged 17 November 1946 (service list).
• ⚠️ Stonemason (p.5), the trade he had started in a quarry before the war (boyhood page).
• ⚠️ c.1957, knocked down and nearly killed going for his morning paper by a car driven by a Dutchman on holiday; £100 compensation; a family holiday in Arran. He lists this as the third of the "Questions I've asked myself", after the two about Banwell ("Was it coincidence …?"), and then answers himself: "Maybe I'm just romancing but there's an old Scotch saying, FACTS ARE CHIELS THAT WINNA DING" (p.4; p.5). (Burns, A Dream; the typed copy has "Chills".)
• ⚠️ 1975: Jo Veerman and her husband came to Scotland, stayed at Balmaha, the Murphys stayed a week with them; the traffic warden in Drumchapel; the Sunday Post, "Together After 30 Years", his word (p.4). Article not found, §7.4. What Jo told him on that visit about her father is independently confirmed by the Dutch camp record.
• ⚠️ The pension. "But they didn't believe me. I went to Military Hospital in Musselburgh, I think (1949), and was awarded a 5% pension. I was asked if I'd like a full settlement, and as I was getting married then, I agreed. The sum I got was £30. I thought it was mean, but being in regular work, I accepted" (notebook). His word.
• ⚠️ Why he left the Airborne behind. "Travelling in Edinburgh after demob, I met the young soldier, still in uniform, who was with me at Arnhem. He said MI6 questioned him about me and Sammy Welsh, and how we got on with Mr Donaldson who was murdered. That finished me with the Army, and I ceased communicating with the Airborne" (page). His word; the soldier is not named. It is the only explanation in the papers for why a man with this record never joined the reunions.
• ⚠️ Wife died c.1995, his word (p.5). He and his wife had four children, Frances, Catherine, Martin and Mary, and seven grandchildren, Adam, Paul, Cathy, Stewart, Kenny, Stephen and Joanne (family knowledge). He buried three of them: Catherine about 1991, his word (p.5), Martin in March 1997, aged 43 (the memoir, written late in 1998, says "2 years ago"), and Frances. Mary is the one of the four still with us, and the grandchildren are who these pages are for.

---

3. Named associates

His battalion. Eighteen further 156 Para Bn accounts are held from The Battle of Arnhem Archive, including Lt-Col Richard des Voeux, the CO, killed at Arnhem, and Maj. Geoffrey Powell. None mentions Murphy by name (checked by search). The battalion history is John O'Reilly, From Delhi to Arnhem (Thoroton Publishing), and there is a living 151–156 Parachute Battalion Association (156para.co.uk). ⚠️ Neither yet checked for Murphy.

---

4. Dutch helpers register

4.1 What the British recorded afterwards

The British index to Dutch helpers, compiled by Allied military intelligence and now TNA WO 208/5476 and 5477, lists roughly 8,000 people with an award grade from 1 (the head of a major escape line, seven people) down to 5 and 6, which were the common ones. Grades 1 to 4 carried the American Medal of Freedom; grade 5 carried the Eisenhower Certificate. Five of the households in this file are in it.

Kruimel's grade 4 is the American Medal of Freedom he is known to have received in 1947, and his address is the Utrecht hospital where he worked. The Achterveld entry is the farm's own address and the award is posthumous, which fits Jacob Veerman and no one else known to have died there; ⚠️ the index gives the first name as "Dick", where Hardy's report and every Dutch source say Jacob. Either the name is wrong, or "Dick" is a name he was known by, or another Veerman of that farm also died. Two more Veermans of the family were held at Neuengamme (RTV Utrecht).

⚠️ Baron Mackay is not in the index. The page runs MACHIELSEN to MACKLENBERGH with no Mackay between them (MAAL to MIJNHEER). Nor is any Esveld called Gerald or Coen: the two indexed are an Esveld-Strubbe on Amerongen's main street and Berend Albert Esveld at Leersum, four miles away, which is where the British had him after the liberation rather than where he was active.

---

5. Discrepancies

5.1 Settled

5.2 Date of birth

11 November 1920, the service list ("D.O.B. 11/11/1920"), TNA WO 422/38420, and his own "78 on 11th November 1998" (p.5). ParaData's 1921 is wrong. ⚠️ Confirm from ScotlandsPeople.

5.3 Still open

5.3a The service number, and where he signed on

The family papers say he enlisted at Cowdenbeath, twice; ParaData says Dundee. ◐ The numbers around his side with the family.

Army numbers were issued in blocks to recruiting areas, so the men holding the numbers next to 2756457 were signed on in the same place at about the same time. Every one of them is catalogued at Kew:

All seven surnames are Scottish. Those records give no birthplace, but two men from this stretch of the sequence turn up again on German prisoner-of-war cards, which do give one, and both were born within three miles of the Murphy house at Kelty:

• C. Campbell, 2756460 — "Charles Campbell. Date of Birth: 18 May 1919. Place of Birth: Lochore, Fifeshire" (WO 416/55/457). Lochore is the village Murphy's Father McCabe came from, §1.1.
• Pte Peter Middlemass, 2756363, The Black Watch — "Date of Birth: 11/05/1918. Place of Birth: Kelty, Scotland" (WO 416/254/307). Ninety-four numbers below Murphy's, in Murphy's own regiment and his own village.

Two more Kelty men sit in the same wider range, both Black Watch: Andrew Fotheringham, 2752282 (WO 416/126/219), and William Morton, 2758500 (WO 416/263/433).

⚠️ This is an inference from a number block, not a document naming a recruiting office. It shows the block was issued in the Fife coalfield, which is where Cowdenbeath is and where Dundee is not. It does not prove which desk he walked up to. WO 422/38420, his service record, settles it outright, and settles the enlistment date with it.

---

6. On Tex Banwell: an allegation

This section records what Thomas Murphy wrote about a fellow evader. None of it is established. It is here because leaving out a first-hand account would misrepresent the memoir; it was his honest opinion, and this file treats it as that and no more.

Who he means

Murphy never names him in the typed pages, but he identifies him three times as the man with the BEM: the handwritten heading "A word about Tex BANWELL B.E.M" (ms); "my companion whom I haven't named as he was awarded the B.E.M. for his experiences" (notes); "Was my mate with the B.E.M medal a quisling" (p.4). Banwell "was awarded a BEM in 1969" (Banwell): London Gazette supplement 44740, 1 January 1969, p. 25, "22290927 Sergeant Keith Deamer BANWELL, The Parachute Regiment, Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve", British Empire Medal (Military Division), with no citation (Gazette). There is no doubt who is meant, and Murphy's knowledge of the award dates his writing to after 1969.

Verdict, claim by claim

Nothing here is printed as fact without a second source. Each thing he said about the man, and where it stands:

What the published record says about Banwell is set out below, and it does not agree with itself either. The pegasusarchive page's Auschwitz is impossible on the dates: the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945, and Banwell was taken in Holland on 3 January.

What Murphy alleged

In the memoirs, on five pages (ms; ms; p.6; typed pp.1–3; typed pp.4–6):

• That on recapture, "he told the Germans I had a gun, which was true", and, in front of the Germans, said "What about your pistol?", obliging Murphy to retrieve it from under the carpet.
• That the Germans would therefore trace the revolver back to Barneveld, "hence the trouble which was caused there".
• That "Banwell was a very suspicious customer"; that "because of the gun, my interrogation was more severe and threatening".
• That he saw the man "smartly dressed in new British Battle dress entering an Official German Staff Car", and "later saw him in Stalag in old battle dress and avoided my gaze".
• "I think Tex should have got decorated from the Germans also, as well as the British. He seemed to have cooperated well with them."
• And, as questions: "Was my mate with the B.E.M medal a quisling. Was he the cause of the breakup of the Underground in that area?"

On the handwritten page he wrote the name and then scored it out. On the typed page he put the whole thing as questions he had asked himself.

What the record says

Against the causal claim:

• Jacob Veerman was arrested on 24 January 1945 because the SD were hunting his daughter as a courier (Neuengamme), which had nothing to do with a revolver. The harm Murphy feared he had caused at Barneveld is not what the Dutch record says happened there.
• ⚠️ Murphy also says the Germans "rounded up the Uncle and others". A different arrest, and never checked. There was a round-up, and the Dutch record has it in full. Noble, hidden at Barneveld and Achterveld in early December 1944 while Murphy was at Klein Achterveld two kilometres away, says the son of his Achterveld host "was arrested the following week and has not been heard of since", carrying reports to "Capt. Michael KING, SAS" (Noble). José Huurdeman (Ondergronds in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, Historische Kring Leusden, 2019, as quoted on the Oorlogsgravenstichting's page for one of the dead) gives the cause and the sequence: Kirschen's SAS team had been billeted at two addresses at De Glind and Scherpenzeel from 15 September to 5 November 1944; after the SD arrested the RVV leader Jan Thijssen they got hold of the old billet, and "Hoewel het SAS-team al meer dan een maand weg was voerde de SD diverse arrestaties uit", although the team had been gone more than a month, the SD made a series of arrests. 15 December 1944, Piet Veenendaal's farm at Scherpenzeel: "Fokke Dijkstra, die de pech had als koerier daar op het verkeerde moment te zijn werd evenals Piet Veenendaal op grove wijze mishandeld", Fokke Dijkstra, who had the bad luck to be there as a courier at the wrong moment, was brutally mistreated, as was Veenendaal; all taken to the Willem III barracks at Apeldoorn. 19 December, under duress Veenendaal gave up an address on the Klettersteeg at Achterveld, the farm of Cornelis Verhoef, where the SD arrested every young man in the house, the sons Jan and Johan Verhoef among them. 31 December, the farm Hardeveld on the Postweg, Leusden, the team's other billet: two farmhands and the maid. 5 January 1945, the gamekeeper Bab van Garderen's house: his wife and an evacuee. "De vrouwen kwamen na 7 weken vrij, maar de mannen zijn allen omgekomen in Neuengamme of in een van de buitenkampen", the women were freed after seven weeks, but every one of the men died at Neuengamme or a subcamp (Huurdeman). Fokke Dijkstra died at Neuengamme on 19 April 1945, aged 18 (Neuengamme). ◐ He fits Noble's arrested son: his father Boke Dijkstra was the wasbaas, the laundry boss, of the Rudolphstichting children's village at De Glind, which adjoins Achterveld ("Mijn vader was de wasbaas … mijn broertje Fokke, die omgekomen is in de oorlog", De Glind), which is Noble's "manager of the penal settlement bath-house"; and his brother Jan Dijkstra of De Glind is the man who had been bringing airmen to the Veerman farm since 1943 (§2.6), which fits Noble's "his son who conducted me to the house". ⚠️ No source puts Noble in the Dijkstra house; the identification is by occupation, place, the arrested courier son and the conductor son. ❌ For Murphy's explanation: no Veerman is among those arrested, and the Dutch record gives the cause as the SD working back through Kirschen's abandoned billets, not a revolver. "The Uncle" remains unidentified. ✅ Noble also has the Klooster house in Barneveld raided "that night" and a helper "Ape" arrested. Both are documented. Dries Klooster, a clerk of the Amersfoortsestraat, Barneveld, was one of the resistance group "Hein"; he died at Nijkerk on 17 April 1945 and is buried at De Plantage, Barneveld (Oorlogsgravenstichting). Albert van Meerveld of Nijkerk, cover name "Ab Prins", "the man in the leather jacket", was arrested at Klooster's house on 8 December 1944, taken to the Willem III Kazerne at Apeldoorn and tortured there, sent to Kamp Amersfoort a week later and on to Wöbbelin, a Neuengamme subcamp, where he died on 14 March 1945 (Oorlogsgravenstichting, biography by Gerjan Crebolder). ◐ Noble's "Ape" is "Ab", the name he went by, heard by an Englishman. The date, the house and the arrest all match. That is the same road Jacob Veerman was sent down seven weeks later: Willem III, Amersfoort, Neuengamme. §9

On the sighting, the published record on Banwell:

• Banwell was taken separately ("at various phases"), marched to Velp for interrogation, stripped and, because his underwear was clean, suspected of long shelter by the Resistance and handed to the Gestapo. Flown to Berlin. "Ordered to reveal the names of the Dutch Resistance he had been in contact with, and his refusal to answer led to him being twice brought before a mock firing squad." Then "released by the Red Army in March 1945" (pegasusarchive). The Dutch researcher Willem Tiemens has the same Velp interrogation: the Germans suspected him because "he was well fed, neatly shaved and wearing clean civilian clothes" (Tiemens).
• ⚠️ But the published Banwell record does not agree with itself. The same pegasusarchive page also has him imprisoned in Auschwitz. Wikipedia has him "moved to Fallingbostel, where he was liberated by the Red Army in March 1945" (Wikipedia); Tiemens has him at "STALAG IIB in Fallingbostel. Daar beleefde hij de bevrijding", liberated there (Tiemens). Fallingbostel was liberated by British troops on 16 April (Wikipedia), not the Red Army in March; and the MI9 reports place Banwell near Otterlo in late November and on the Betuwe on 2 January, which leaves very little time for Auschwitz. Two of the four accounts put him at Fallingbostel, the camp where Murphy says he saw him.
• ◐ A contemporary witness puts Banwell in Stalag XI-B. Noble's POW questionnaire, 26 April 1945: "Do not know fate of the 8 people with whom captured in Jan. In particular Sgt. Banwell, AAC. (Reported sent back to Gestapo in Holland from Stalag XIB)" (Noble). Noble himself was in XI-B from 28 February to 6 March 1945. So Banwell was in the camp Murphy says he saw him in, and was then, by camp report, taken back to Holland by the Gestapo. ⚠️ "Reported" is Noble's word: hearsay inside the camp, not something he saw. It fits neither the published "flown to Berlin, released by the Red Army in March" nor a quiet stay at Fallingbostel, and it is the only contemporary trace of Banwell after Velp.
• Banwell has no liberation questionnaire indexed on Ancestry. A search of the WO 344 collection on 5 September 2026 for Banwell returned only a Frederick Charles Banwell and fuzzy matches; Haller's questionnaire is indexed, and three Thomas Murphys are (§7.1). Every liberated British POW was meant to complete one. What the absence means is not known.
• A clean uniform inside the wire was not in itself suspicious, the liberating Hussars were met by "a guard of Airborne troops, impeccably attired" (Wikipedia). Murphy's charge was about a man walking out of one into a staff car, which is different.

Documented, and neither for nor against:

• Banwell took part in the resistance attack on a German vehicle at the Oldenallerbrug between Putten and Nijkerk on the night of 30 September / 1 October 1944, "Na te hebben deelgenomen aan de aanslag op Duitse officieren bij Putten op 30 september komt 'Tex' bij Kruimel terecht" (Airborne Magazine); with "Piet Oosterbroek, a member of the Dutch Resistance" (Banwell). The reprisal was the Razzia van Putten: on 1 October the village was raided; on 2 October 659 men were taken to Kamp Amersfoort, 58 released there, 602 deported to Neuengamme; 552 died, and 48 came home (Wikipedia NL; Wikipedia EN). "Banwell had no knowledge of these events until after the war, and later expressed his sorrow" (Banwell). He came to De Ruif afterwards and left on 22 October.
• "Sgt. BANWELL was at that time in communication with Capt. KING through the Underground" (Hardy), he was more embedded in the Dutch organisation than the other evaders.
• In early December he was at a farm at Scherpenzeel with Davison and Moore; when a two-man dinghy turned up, "Tex would stay behind and take his chances" and the other two crossed on 5 December (Davison). Noble reached the same farm about 6 December and found him there (Noble). The two accounts fit.
• These are facts about what he did, recorded because they are part of the same record. They do not bear on whether Murphy's allegation is true.

Position

The claim that the revolver led the Germans to Barneveld is contradicted by the Dutch record. The staff-car sighting is one man's word and is neither confirmed nor refuted; the published account that would refute it (Berlin, Red Army) is contradicted by two secondary sources that put Banwell at Fallingbostel and now by a contemporary one, Noble's April 1945 questionnaire, which has him in XI-B and then "sent back to Gestapo in Holland". What the Gestapo wanted him back for is not recorded anywhere found so far. Banwell's own liberation questionnaire, if it exists, would settle where he was. Banwell died in 1999; his ashes are in the Airborne Cemetery at Oosterbeek, his battledress jacket and medals are displayed at the Airborne Museum Hartenstein, and he was survived by three children (Wikipedia).

---

7. Archive shopping list

7.1 The National Archives, Kew: and what is already known to exist

Also: the Arolsen Archives (the International Tracing Service) hold Nazi camp records and are free online, the place to look for Jacob Veerman at Neuengamme and Amersfoort, and possibly Jopie at Westerbork, Fokke Dijkstra at Neuengamme, and any German camp card for Murphy himself. ⚠️ Attempted 13 September 2026: the search sub-site, collections.arolsen-archives.org, was unreachable from three machines while the main site was up; it resolves but never answers, so it may be a block on this network rather than an outage. Try it from a phone on mobile data. Failing that, the written enquiry is free and does the same search by hand, five months on average, up to thirteen.

Not Berlin. The old Deutsche Dienststelle, now the Bundesarchiv's Abteilung Deutsches Reich at Berlin-Tegel, answers on German personnel only, "German prisoners of war in Western custody" among them, and refers camp-prisoner enquiries to Arolsen (their page). The German cards on British prisoners are the ones the British Army took in 1945, WO 416 above, and there is no second copy. The family's search of German records was right to come up empty.

Every Kew item above that is "not digitised" can still be had without a visit: each Discovery page has a "request a copy" button that returns a quotation for a scanned copy by email. The war diary, the missing-men file, Walsh's original and Joyce's six cards are all in that category.

7.2 Regimental and published

7.3 Dutch

What works from a desk, tested 13 September 2026. The Dutch side turned out to be far more searchable than the file assumed:

Living descendants, approach through an institution. Jacob Veerman's granddaughters Joke and Alie and great-granddaughter Aline visited Neuengamme in May 2024 to research him (RTV Utrecht). Jopie's photograph is credited to Jacques Vanhaelen.

7.4 The 1975 newspaper article

Not found. What the British Newspaper Archive holds, checked 13 September 2026, since it decides what can be searched at all:

Searches run on 5 September 2026 (searching free without an account):

The OCR on this era is very poor. Next: the three Scottish dailies above for April–June 1945, where a Kelty "back from the dead" story would have been picked up with more detail than the Sunday Post gave it; then browse the 1975 issues. September (Arnhem anniversary) or May (thirty years since liberation).

The paper itself is the better route, and there are two doors. The archive is the slow one: DC Thomson Group Archives, archives@dcthomson.co.uk, holds the Sunday Post run, is not open to visits, charges for a search by scope, and its external enquiry service is closed until January 2027 (their own help page, checked 13 September 2026). The newsdesk is the open one: news@sundaypost.com, or The Editor, The Sunday Post, Spiers View, 50 High Craighall Road, Glasgow G4 9UD, 01382 223131 (contact page, checked 13 September 2026). Both 1945 and 1975 are their own paper's stories, and the family holds the 1945 cutting; a paper that has run a story twice is the one most likely to be able to put its hand on the second one, and most likely to want to run it a third time.

7.5 Scottish records · 7.6 Red Cross

ScotlandsPeople, birth entry Kelty 1920; John Murphy × Catherine Brannan; Michael. Family address 1945: 91 Centre Street, Kelty. ICRC, individual WW2 enquiries were closed at the time of the original research note, with the form due to reopen 25 January 2027 ⚠️ unverified since.

---

8. Prioritised actions

What each one would prove is stated, so the list can be worked in any order. Banwell is left where §6 leaves him; nothing below chases him.

Free, from a desk, in a browser:

1. Archief Eemland, archiefeemland.nl: the Amersfoortse Courant and Leusder Krant for 1945–46 and for 1975, and the Historische Kring Leusden index. Achterveld is Leusden. The Barneveld paper has no 1945 issues; this is where Jacob Veerman's memorial notice, Jopie's homecoming and any Dutch side of the 1975 visit would be. The site turns away scripts, not people.
2. British Newspaper Archive: Fife Free Press, Dundee Courier and Daily Record, "Murphy" and "Kelty", April–June 1945. The homecoming story with more than the Sunday Post gave. Not the Dunfermline Press, which is not there for 1945.
3. Findmypast, free index: WO 417 for 2756457, the missing → died → alive sequence with dates; then WO 361/1797/1, the Stalag XI-B roll, for his POW number.
4. Discovery: download Hardy's Military Medal recommendation, WO 373/64/316, free with an account. The citation for the night he was caught.
5. Ancestry → WO 344: the three Thomas Murphy questionnaires (ids 64507, 64508, 125742). Ancestry Library Edition is free in Glasgow libraries; or the 14-day trial. His own account of capture and captivity, in his own words, in 1945.
6. Arolsen: retry collections.arolsen-archives.org from a phone on mobile data; failing that the written enquiry, free. Jacob Veerman at Neuengamme, and any card for Murphy.
7. Internet Archive, free account: borrow Roy, Ready for the Fray, Heaps, The Grey Goose of Arnhem, Warrack and Powell, and search inside for Schjelderup, Hardy, Gri, Amerongen, Pegasus.
8. collectie.airbornemuseum.nl: Pegasus, Willem III Kazerne, Kruimel.
9. ScotlandsPeople: the 1920 birth entry; the 1921 census for Millers Buildings, which would show Michael and his age.
10. Google Books in a browser for Caspers and Noordman, to see whether they are worth buying.

Paid, still from a desk:

11. His service record, WO 422/38420, through TNA's request service with proof of death: £42.25. Enlistment date and place, the wound, every posting. The single most valuable document left.
12. Copies by post from Kew, each quoted for on its Discovery page: WO 171/1247 (the battalion war diary), WO 361/633 (the missing-men file), WO 208/5433/14 (Walsh's original), WO 416/203/272 (Joyce's six cards), WO 171/4234 (49 Recce's diary for 3 January).
13. Buy Noordman, Schuilplaats de Veluwe, and O'Reilly, From Delhi to Arnhem, and read both for his name. Kessel is done.
14. The Sunday Post for the 1975 article: the newsdesk now (news@sundaypost.com), DC Thomson's archive service when it reopens in January 2027.

Outward, by email:

15. The 151–156 Parachute Battalion Association, will@156para.co.uk: the platoon, Shepley's platoon, and whether John O'Reilly heard of Murphy from the Dutch side.
16. Historische Kring Leusden: the Veermans, and whether Aaltje's or Jopie's descendants would like Hardy's report.
17. Wolter Noordman: the De Ruif guestbook page before 12 October 1944, and whether Murphy or Walsh signed it.
18. The Black Watch Museum archivist, free first: 2nd Bn context, and Michael.
19. Correct ParaData (birth year, enlistment, drop date) and deposit copies with Airborne Assault and Hartenstein.

Not worth more time: the Bundesarchiv (German personnel only); the IWM beyond the Powell interview; the Dunfermline Press and Glasgow Herald on the British Newspaper Archive; the CABR index; Delpher or the Barneveld paper for the 1975 visit, both searched.

---

9. Open questions

1. What is his POW number? ◐ No WO 416 card survives, and nor does one for Banwell or Porter, the other two taken in civilian clothes, while the men processed as ordinary prisoners have cards (§7.1). ⚠️ Suggestive, not conclusive; cards were also pulled from the series for postwar claims.
2. Which of the three Thomas Murphy questionnaires is his, and what does it say?
3. How exactly was he recaptured, swimming, or taken in a house; and was he one of the seven Allied men moved from Velp to the Wolvenplein and De Kruisberg with Noble?
4. How did Lt Donaldson die? ◐ Most CWGC records give 21 September and one adds "presumed died of wounds", against the 20th on their website, but both dates were written in red by the same office, so the day is not closed (§2.1). The manner is not settled either, and the three Arnhem war-crimes files at Kew are where to test it. Who was Sgt Shepley, who was not killed, and where did Sgt Joyce go after Stalag 357?
5. Which group was he in on the night of 17 November?
6. Did he sign the De Ruif guestbook?
7. Who was Jacob Veerman's brother in the Dutch police, and what happened to him? Neither brother was one at his marriage (§2.6); a brother-in-law is possible, and "oom Gerrit" of Ede has a candidate in Gerrit Jan Broekhuis, the baker who married Jacob's sister. ◐ A brother of Jacob's, and a nephew, were held at Neuengamme and survived, per the granddaughters (§2.6): which brother, when, and why? Arolsen, Huurdeman's book, and the 4-5 mei comité Achterveld are the places to ask.
8. Did Jacob Veerman, Van Eysinga, or Baron Mackay receive the King's Medal?
9. Was Jopie among the women brought to Westerbork via Apeldoorn? And who was Anwert, the other married name the Vrouwenmars roll gives her?
10. Which Baron Mackay, and which estate at Harskamp?
11. Who were "Brummager", Eric Blok, "Emmy", and was the Leuvenum house Kijkuit?
12. What became of "Jan (2)", arrested c.16 November 1944?
13. Why was Banwell "sent back to Gestapo in Holland from Stalag XIB" (Noble), where was he held after that, and why is there no questionnaire for him?
14. What became of Michael Murphy?
15. Where is the 1975 article?
16. What did he see between 16 April and 25 April 1945?
17. Who was the young soldier he met in Edinburgh after demob, and what was MI6 asking about Donaldson?
18. Is the medical officer with identity card No. 11 Capt. Noble? His report and questionnaire survive and fit, but do not name Murphy. ◐ Porter saw "a Captain, (who was also a Medical Doctor Paratrooper,)" with a British private and a sergeant at Amerongen in the last week of December, and the party had only one such captain (§2.7).
19. "Captain King" is Kirschen (§3) and the December 1944 round-up is documented (§6). Klooster and "Ape" are Dries Klooster and Albert "Ab Prins" van Meerveld (§6). Was any Veerman caught in it, who is "the Uncle", and why does Noble call King "Michael"?
20. Was there a British patrol at the Rhenen bridge before dawn on 3 January 1945 that lost eight killed and three captured, as Noble was told in captivity? Nothing found; 49th Division and Recce Regiment war diaries at Kew.

---

10. Sources

A copy of every source is kept with this file; the sources page lists them all, with where each came from.

Family papers, §11.

British primary (transcribed): MI9 reports of Hardy, Walsh, Schjelderup (extract), Kessel, Longland, Warrack, Bryson, Haller, McNaught, Banwell, Warren, and eighteen 156 Bn men; Noble's escape report and POW questionnaire; Moore's summary and Davison's postwar memoir — The Battle of Arnhem Archive. The British index to Dutch helpers, WO 208/5476–5477, as photographed by John Howes. Bob Porter, The Long Return (1997), chapters 5–8, online at AFEES (chapter 5; chapters 6–8, transcribed passages). London Gazette 44740 (Banwell's BEM) and 37274 (Hardy's MM).

British published: Lipmann Kessel, Surgeon at Arms (1958; 1959 US edition on the Internet Archive, extracts).

Dutch: Somford, "Op zolder bij Oom Joop", Airborne Magazine nr.27 (2023) · Omroep Gelderland on Noordman, 4 Dec 2019 · elspeethistorie.nl, "Baken van verzet" · Digitaal Monument Neuengamme, Jacob Veerman · TracesOfWar, J. M. Vanhaelen-Veerman · Stichting Vrouwenmars 1945 · RTV Utrecht, 4 May 2024 · Geschiedenis Magazine, "Ongezien de Rijn over" · Willem Tiemens on Banwell · Nationaal Archief, "De Harskamp" · Wikipedia EN/NL on Van Nispen tot Sevenaer and the Putten raid · KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme on the Cap Arcona · wwii-netherlands-escape-lines.com's list of Dutch helpers of airmen · Frans Kluiters, Dutch Agents 1940–1945 (NISA) · elspeethistorie.nl, "Geheim agenten" and "Verzet" · Oorlogsslachtoffers Betuwe-West on Adriaan Maljers · Stichting Doetinchem Herdenkt, two pages: the Allied prisoners of De Kruisberg, and the 2 February 1945 transport to Neuengamme · Oorlogsgravenstichting, Huurdeman on the December 1944 arrests · Digitaal Monument Neuengamme, Fokke Dijkstra · Rudolphstichting De Glind, Jan Dijkstra's memoir · Wikipedia NL on Velp · the Rotterdamsche Bank plaque · Tijding (Laren), 17 May 1945, via Delpher (the two articles) · Nederland Vrij, 5 May 1945, via Delpher · Barneveldse Krant, 25 May 1976 and 12 September 1977, via archieval.nl · the Erelijst van Gevallenen · Oorlogsgravenstichting on Klooster and Van Meerveld · Kamp Amersfoort's prisoner register · the Veerman civil records via Open Archieven.

German: the US prosecution's Nuremberg summary of the case against Keitel, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression vol. 2 ch. XVI, for the orders on captured paratroopers and recaptured escapers (Avalon Project).

British secondary: ParaData (Murphy; 151 Bn; 156 Bn; Kessel; Arthur Shepley; the other Samuel Walsh) · Black Watch Castle & Museum history and research page · Wikipedia on 156 Bn, Stalags XI-B/357, Stalag II-B, Bergen-Belsen, Tex Banwell, Organisation Todt · The Arrowhead Club on the liberation · IWM catalogue, and the Powell interview · Liberation Route on Pegasus II · Australian War Memorial on "Bardia Bill" · 151–156 Para Bn Association · Thoroton Publishing · Findmypast's piece list · British Newspaper Archive title pages · The National Archives' fees page · Bundesarchiv · Arolsen Archives.

Catalogues: The National Archives' Discovery catalogue, searched by name, by service number and by birthplace (the raw results, as returned by the API). Every catalogue entry cited in this file links to the record it describes, so each can be checked in one click. The German POW cards are WO 416, about 200,000 German-printed cards on prisoners held by the German authorities, taken by the British Army in 1945; the service-number block around Murphy's is in WO 422 and WO 423, §5.3a.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission: the casualty record and five scanned documents for Lt W. S. Donaldson, §2.1.

---

11. The family papers

Every page is reproduced, with a description, on the papers page, and the set is downloadable there as one PDF. Thirty-seven photographs: the 1945 cutting and letter, the service list, the twelve-page memoir and its typed transcript, the second set on captivity with its typed transcript, the typed notes, and six loose or notebook pages. Everything he wrote is here; there is no more.

He wrote the memoirs in the hospital where he was living in his late seventies, and was keen to get it down; his carer there typed the handwritten pages up for him ⚠️ family knowledge. The typed pages carry pencil corrections in another hand, made against the handwritten original: "drawer" to driver, "dingo" to ding, "kille" to killed, "Te" to the, and, in the Banwell paragraph, "We seemed to have co-operated well with them" to "He". On typed pages 1–3 the same hand marks the page breaks of the handwritten original ("Page 1", "Page 2", "Page 3"), writes "Bren gun" against the typist's "born gun fire", inserts "erstwhile" before "my mate" in the staff-car sentence, and corrects "the" to "them" and "asking" to "risking" in the Barneveld line; on the memoir transcript it corrects "for the evening" to "the enemy". Where the typed and handwritten versions differ, this file quotes the handwritten one.

Most of the first page of the captivity set is lost (scan); the typed transcript is the only full text of it.

11.1 Things he said

Not everything he told the family was written down. He rarely spoke of the war at all; the family's word for what he would talk about instead was trifle. What follows is what he did say, remembered by the person he said it to, set down here so it is not lost, and marked ⚠️ like anything else that rests on one memory of one conversation.

• The sniper, and no mercy. Told to his grandson Stewart in his last years, unprompted and out of character. He and his mates were pinned down by a German sniper and could not move. He worked out where the man was and had a clear shot at his head, but something held him back and he put the round into a leg or an arm instead. It did not stop the sniper: wounded, the man fired again and killed the soldier beside Tom. That, as his grandson understood it, was the moment he learned there was no mercy in it. ◐ The memoir has the bones of the story without the lesson: "I was designated as Sniper by Mr Powell. I despatched one Gerry sniper who was giving us trouble" (p.7), which puts it at Arnhem, under Powell, in September 1944. The spoken version is what the written one left out. ⚠️ Who the man beside him was, he did not say.

---

12. His own account, tested claim by claim

Everything Thomas Murphy said or wrote that this file relies on, and the evidence for each.

✅ documented, an independent contemporary or archival source says the same. ◐ consistent, no independent source says it, but the documented record fits it. ⚠️ his word, nothing but the memoir. ❌ contradicted, an independent source says otherwise.

In sum. Wherever an independent record exists for a person, a place or an event, he has it right, including three things nobody in the family had ever been able to check: the name of the Burgemeester at Garderen, what became of Jacob Veerman, and the death of Lt Donaldson, which Walsh described to MI9 in 1945 in the same terms. His mistakes are a couple of surnames, plus the two matters he himself put as questions: whether the revolver led the Germans to Barneveld, and what the man with the BEM was doing. What happened in the interrogation room cannot be checked from any document.

Get in touch

If you knew Tom Murphy, or your family hid him in the winter of 1944, or you have a photograph, a letter, a name or a story that belongs on these pages, please write. Some of the best of what is here came from somebody getting in touch.

Heeft uw familie hem in 1944 geholpen, of heeft u een foto, een brief of een naam? Schrijf gerust in het Nederlands — of in het Vlaams.

Send an email