Dan Murphy, B-26 Blackack 44-67903.

Translation of article in “Tubantia”, weekend of Saturday June 21, 2003.

DAN MURPHY FINISHED LAST FLIGHT

In his short-sleeved polo shirt he is standing in the swamp with rusting pins and bombscrews. Dan Murphy (81), a retired farmer, is back at the place where he crashed with his bomber on March 23, 1945. The digging session in the Gildehauser Venn is the end of a bizarre search.

Last Wednesday afternoon, 3:30 PM. “Wiedergutmachung” in Café Jachthaus Bardel in the village with the same name, just across the border near Losser. Actually, the “Jachthaus” is closed on Wednesdays but host Nienhaus has made an exception for this special occasion. Dan Murphy ticks with his index finger on the wooden table. He wants to make an announcement. The mixed company sifting around the table — mostly farmers from the neighborhood who have seen it happen — is silent. Murphy scrapes his throat and begins: “I want to apologize for everything we did wrong during the war. It has been in my mind for years and I am glad I have come. I swear to you that we only attacked military targets, but in spite of that, innocent people were killed by our bombs. C’est Ia Guerre.” When everybody keeps quiet for a few seconds, he added in a disarming way: “That is French.”

The company starts protesting. “No, of course we do not blame you” says Mrs. Edith Wagner and shows the German way of forgiveness. The 76-year old lady lived during the last months of the war with her relatives in the café where we are sitting right now. Evacuated after the bombings of Gronau. The date of March 23, 1945 remains in her memory forever. She saw, on that afternoon, walking through the woods not far from Café Jachthaus, a burning plane. Coming in her direction and crashing with an enormous bang into the ground. After a little while she saw two hands, high in the air, coming from a ditch. The man rose slowly and became taller and taller. “There was a man like a tree standing before me and he wanted to surrender to me. But I was an eighteen year old girl and scared stiff. I turned around and ran away.” Murphy is thinking aloud: “That might have been Harry Lane, our pilot. He was tall.” Later Mrs. Wagner observed how four or five imprisoned parachutists are sitting on a bench near the Jachthaus in Bardel. They were waiting for transportation in an army truck. “When they saw our condition, they gave us their rations. That was very kind of them. You need not be ashamed, Mr. Murphy.”

Heinrich Bardenhorst (74) asks cautiously if Murphy had been mistreated by bystanders. Murphy shakes his head: “No. Later when we were transported from the temporary prison in Enschede to Bremen and Hamburg, we were kicked and spit at by German civilians. They made us walk along their bombed homes. Apparently to boost the civilians morale. To show them they had taken prisoners of war.” But nobody hurt him at Bardel. Brandenhorst looks relieved: “I have seen how a Komies (a tax servant) ran towards one of the captured crewmembers and shouted: ‘So you threw all those bombs on our heads.” Then he slapped that prisoner in his face. I was shocked and ran home. My mother had to cry when I told the story.” “Americans are human beings” my mother told me.

With Dan Murphy’s arrival at Bardel the German collective feeling of guilt over a black period in the country’s history seems to have found a relief point. Every senior citizen on the other side of the border near Dinkel seems to remember the sight of the crashing airplane. If only because the crash seems to have been the only excitement in Bardel during the whole war. Or, like one of the eyewitnesses told: “Actually there was no war in Bardel”.

Actually the telephone at our redaction was glowing red with calls after the Grafschafter Nachrichten had published our call for publication of the arrival of an American war veteran. All reactions were positive; eyewitnesses who had seen the crash called in large numbers. Everybody wants to help and talk to Murphy personally. A former “Resistance member” tells he arranged that Murphy could stay for free in a luxurious hotel and is almost begging for an interview with the veteran. Still it is a small miracle that Murphy could meet the former eyewitnesses.

Lieutenant Dan Murphy has been in Europe for almost 18 months when he and seven other crewmembers begin their mission to Ahaus early in the afternoon of March 23rd. The Netherlands and Westfalen are not in the normal operations area of the Ninth Air Force of the US Air Force, in which Murphy is serving. Normally the B-26 bombers of the 586th BS fly to targets in Belgium and Southern Germany. March 23rd is not an ordinary day for Murphy. Not only has he got to travel on strange grounds but he is also not flying with his regular crew. He knows only two buddies well pilot Harry Lane and navigator John Rakolta — with the other five he never flew before. It is his 54th mission and the end of his “Tour of Duty’ is almost there. After his 65th mission he will be allowed home. In view of the high risk an average of 5% of the aircraft does not return from a mission — this is not a real high reward. In the evening of March 23rd Murphy finds himself and seven other crewmembers back in the hall of the Oosterveld textile factory (nowadays Harman Garden furniture) on the Rigtersweg in Enschede. The factory is a temporary prison for allied aircrew that were shot down in the area.

According to an American Air Force report the B-26, that took off from Cambrai in Northern France, was hit by German anti aircraft artillery around 5:40 PM between Enter and Goor. Eight crewmembers left the burning plane by parachute. Hanging on his chute 23 year old Dan Murphy sees the plane exploding below. Almost immediately after he safely landed he is surrounded by inhabitants of a small village. “There was a man in uniform aiming his rifle at me. About twenty minutes later a German army truck arrived and I had to get in. After a few hours we were all prisoners and taken to Enschede.”

In order to find the place where he aircraft came down about sixty years later, he calls for help with this newspaper. An article in August last year gave around 20 reactions. Witnesses from Enter, Bornerbroek, Goor, Enschede, Hengelo and Bentelo called us, but further investigation by Community Archivist Adri Roding, indicates that none of the witnesses have seen where Murphy and his buddies came down, simply because there was no match on date and time of the aircraft type — B-26’s over Twente were very rare — in the about 800 (!) aircraft that were shot down over Twente. It was a dead end.

But Dan Murphy keeps on calling. In order to cut costs he gets up in the middle of the night. He does not take a dead end for an answer and keeps telling us further details about the flight. He tells us at the beginning of this month that one of his buddies was taken to a school that was next to a church. Roding rechecks if there is a village in Twente with a school close to a church. No. Could it have been at Bardel just across the border near Losser? It is there that a school was built together with a monastery. The German village had been mentioned before as a possible crash site but was taken off the list because there had been a crash on February 161h and not on March 23rd Germans are very correct in their registrations but were they still in the last chaotic months of the war’?

Adri Roding finds the answer in the diary of a permanently based tower guard on top of the church of Plechelmus in Oldenzaal. The duty tower guard enters in his diary very accurately on March 23, 1945:

17:40: A large formation is proceeding to Enschede from the North.
17:42: A burning bomber is leaving the formation in an easterly direction.
17:45: Three parachutists came down on German soil and one on Dutch soil. The burning plane crashes near Bardel.

The Germans indeed are wrong with their registration. On February 16th there was a plane crash near Gildehaus but this one was shot down by a German fighter. A B-26 being hit by German Flak is testified by three Dutch witnesses. Joop Zwaverink and Jan Timmerman of Losser, and Herman Noordkamp of Overdinkel have seen a burning plane coming from the direction of Enschede. When they shook hands with Murphy last Wednesday afternoon at the Denekamperdijk in Losser, Zwaverink (76) called out: “Man you scared us quite a lot. What an explosion. My pants were waving around my legs from the air pressure.”

Dan Murphy’s strong determination brought him not only to Twente to shake hands with the witnesses but also to find parts of his plane. Jan Schulte-Gehring (71) told him in the café Jachthaus not to have very high hopes. Not only did the plane explode — all the bombs were still on board — it was also taken apart over the years. “As a child we went over there to strip parts of it. The larger parts were sold by the farmers to local salvagers. That man seems to have bought a motorcycle from the profit”.

But in spite of all that Murphy asks if he could be taken to the spot. The group leaves the Jachthaus at the end of the afternoon for the Gildehauser Venn. Dan Murphy never thought of boots and long sleeves in a swampy area, where thousands of mosquitoes fly around. It makes his son in law, Peter Verstraete, dressed in shorts, sigh: “Couldn’t Dan have crashed somewhere else?”

The crater that the B-26 made, was enormous. It is now a little lake in the woods. The group, lead by Jochen Eickhoff (60) and Peter Ebert (59) of the search group Icarus, have found many wrecks already with their metal detectors. The ground yields screws, bolts, a rubber ring, split pens and bomb splinters. Dan Murphy takes the shreds with shaking hands. His “Tour of Duty” has now definitively been completed after 58 years.