Daniel Joseph "Joe" Murphy
Royal Navy HMS Hunter
from:Skibbereen, Co. Cork
My uncle Daniel Joseph Murphy was a crew member on the HMS Hunter who survived the battle of Narvik on April 10th 1940. He hailed from the Skibbereen area in Co. Cork in Ireland and was more commonly known as Joe. In the naval service, Joe served in various grades as an "engineering mechanic". He died in 1985 shortly before his 73rd birthday. Joe never really talked about his experiences during the war and the information we have is sketchy. According to my mother's recollection of his story, when the Hunter was stricken, Joe and others below decks managed to make their way up on deck to find it relatively desolate. Knowing the ship was doomed, they followed their comrades and jumped overboard. Our understanding is that Joe and certain others apparently managed to make it to shore without being captured and they then began to head for Sweden which was neutral. Their journey to Sweden saw them hiding and resting by day and travelling by night under cover of darkness. In general, Joe praised the Norwegian people for helping them on their way to Sweden. (This is our understanding of how Joe got to Sweden. We would appreciate it if any other survivors (or their relatives) who travelled with Joe through Norway could provide us with any more information.) Following the battle of Narvik, my grandmother received a telegram that Joe was missing presumed dead and the family remained under this assumption for a while.
On reaching Sweden Joe was interned and he spent part of his time there working with the local farming community. After a period of time, an opportunity arose for him and other internees to help man a merchant ship with a cargo of iron ore destined for Britain. We believe the ship was called the Sketern. Joe recounted that there was a heavy fog as the ship left harbour, but the fog then lifted and they ran straight into the path of German forces. Rather than let the iron ore fall into enemy hands, the captain scuttled the ship and they were then taken as POWs. Whilst in Sweden, Joe had also befriended a Swedish girl called Evy Carlsson who subsequently wrote to my grandmother to let her know that she knew him. Evy's letter to my grandmother came subsequent to Joe being taken as a POW, because Evy described the scuttling of the ship in her letter in broken English as "ship sink self which be good". We think this was Evy's way of saying that Joe had probably been taken as a POW rather than the ship having been sunk in battle. My grandmother subsequently received a telegram (I think from the British Red Cross) confirming that Joe was a POW. We know that he was in a few different POW camps and my grandmother received a photograph of him in the form of a post card that was postmarked Marlag U. Milag Nord and dated 17.8.43. On the back, it referred to Joe as POW No. 608 in Stammlager VIII B.
The photograph was a group shot of Joe and seven other men, Joe is at the back second from left. I am not sure if the other men in the photo are also survivors from the HMS Hunter. I am posting it on this website to see if anyone might recognise any of the other men in it. While he was a POW, my grandmother began sending regular parcels to Joe via the Red Cross. The Red Cross had instructed her to leave the parcel a few pounds light so that they could also pack chocolate and cigarettes into it. The cigarettes seemingly came in as a handy bartering tool, because Joe recalled that they used to get some sort of horrible dark or black bread to eat in the camps and some of the German guards used to sneak white bread in for them in exchange for cigarettes. Joe also recalled their camp being liberated by Russian troops at the end of the war and locals running into the the camp trying to take refuge in the wake of the Russian advance. The Russians then helped the former POWs to get planes back to Britain. Joe spent another 13 years in the naval service after the war and finally retired from naval duties in 1958.
