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.

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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.

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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.

⚠️ The start day and month of every row is cut off by the page edge and shadow in the only photograph of this document, which matters for the drop date (§5.3). The original needs re-photographing.

His own typed narrative (scan) 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).

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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. ParaData's 19th is unsupported. The service list ends Home service on 17 September, consistent with an 18th departure but not proof, the start date of the N/W Europe row is unreadable. ⚠️ A clear scan of that sheet may settle this. Failing that, the battalion war diary is WO 171/1247.

The wounding. Hardy's report says Murphy and the other 156 man. Walsh, had both been wounded and had both escaped from Willem III Barracks (Hardy), so the wounding is independently attested even though the date and place are not.

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).

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 very likely swapped the units.

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". 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 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's typed notes call him "Mr Van Nispen Sevenaar who was on Burgemeister Von Amsterdam" (typed pp.1–3).

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).

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). 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.
• 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 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 (genealogy), so the man exists to be found; 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 those brothers and is probably an uncle on her mother's side, so he is not the policeman this file once took him for. 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.

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.

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.

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".

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). Every item is ⚠️ his word alone unless marked, 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". ⚠️ Unidentified. Banwell, taken in the same action, was interrogated at Velp (Banwell; Tiemens); "GWELF" may be a rendering of Velp. Unverified.
• 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.
• "We were interrogated, sometimes marched under armed escort at 2 or 3 in the morning, and told we were to be shot."
• 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. ⚠️ Unexplained; the MI9 account has automatic weapons.
• The "Tody Organisation" pressganging workers. Organisation Todt, which used forced labour on a vast scale (Wikipedia).

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.

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).
• ⚠️ 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 CHILLS THAT WINNA DING" (p.4; p.5). (Burns, A Dream: "facts are chiels that winna ding".)
• ⚠️ 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.
• ⚠️ Wife died c.1995; a son died aged 43 c.1996; a daughter, Catherine, died c.1991, his word (p.5).

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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.

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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.

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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

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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). There is no doubt who is meant, and Murphy's knowledge of the award dates his writing to after 1969.

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.

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.
• 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.
• 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 itself contradicted by two sources that put Banwell at Fallingbostel. 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).

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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. ⚠️ Not yet searched.

7.2 Regimental and published

7.3 Dutch

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. Searches run on the British Newspaper Archive on 5 September 2026 (Sunday Post coverage 1914–1971, 1973–2005; searching free without an account):

The OCR on this era is very poor. Next: DC Thomson Group Archives' free 20-minute research service; then browse the 1975 issues. September (Arnhem anniversary) or May (thirty years since liberation); then the Evening Times on microfilm at the Mitchell Library.

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.

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8. Prioritised actions

Free, or nearly, from a desk:

1. Ancestry → WO 344: open the three Thomas Murphy questionnaires (ids 64507, 64508, 125742) and find his. Ancestry Library Edition is free in Glasgow libraries; or the 14-day trial. While there, search Banwell again under every spelling.
2. Findmypast → WO 417, died 20 Nov 1944.
3. ScotlandsPeople → birth, Kelty 1920.
4. Re-photograph the family papers, flat, daylight, phone overhead, full frame.
5. Arolsen Archives → Jacob Veerman.
6. NARA Dutch helper files, ID 5709392.
7. DC Thomson, re the 1975 article.

Paid or in person:

8. Order WO 171/1247, the battalion war diary.
9. Order WO 422/38420, the service record.
10. Buy Noordman, Schuilplaats de Veluwe; O'Reilly, From Delhi to Arnhem; Kessel, Surgeon at Arms, and read all three for his name.
11. Kew for WO 416, WO 361/1797 and WO 208 originals.
12. Black Watch Museum research service.

Outward:

13. Historische Kring Leusden → the Veermans.
14. Wolter Noordman → the De Ruif guestbook; did Murphy sign it?
15. 151–156 Parachute Battalion Association → the platoon.
16. Correct ParaData.
17. Deposit copies with Airborne Assault and Hartenstein.

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9. Open questions

1. What is his POW number, and does a WO 416 card survive?
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 where interrogated ("GWELF")?
4. Which platoon was he in?
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. Gerrit of Ede?, and what happened to him?
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?
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. Where was Banwell held, 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?

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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, and eighteen 156 Bn men — The Battle of Arnhem Archive.

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 helper list.

British secondary: ParaData (Murphy; 151 Bn; 156 Bn; Kessel) · Black Watch Castle & Museum history · 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 · Liberation Route on Pegasus II · Australian War Memorial on "Bardia Bill" · 151–156 Para Bn Association · Thoroton Publishing.

Catalogues: The National Archives' Discovery catalogue.

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11. The family papers

Reproduced here, with a combined PDF. Phone photographs, most at 685×1280; several are at the limit of legibility and the originals should be re-photographed (§8.4).

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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 two things nobody in the family had ever been able to check: the name of the Burgemeester at Garderen, and what became of Jacob Veerman. 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.