File No.: Case File # 21
Title: "The Mysterious Wolfheze Railway Station Girl"
 Subject: Identifying the "particularly pretty girl attracting a lot of attention"
which Martin Middlebrook mentioned in his 1994 book "Arnhem 1944 the Airborne Battle"
Investigation made at: Wolfheze, the Netherlands
GPS Location: 52°00'19.8"N 5°47'31.6"E
Period Covered: 17-20SEP1944
Date: 14JUN2025
Case Classification: Battlefield myth
Status of Case: Unsolved
Introduction:

In his book "Arnhem 1944 the Airborne Battle", Penguin Books 1994 ISBN 0-14-014342-4, Martin Middlebrook wrote in Chapter 8 "The Vital Hours" on page 117:

"The little railway station at Wolfheze became a center of activity, with many airborne men arriving there from the landing area. One particularly pretty girl – believed at the time to be the daughter of the station master, though this was not so – attracted a lot of attention, including those of ‘a ginger-haired war correspondent’."

Who could have been that girl that distracted not only a war correspondent embedded with the British 1st Airborne Division, but also at least some airborne soldiers with an operational task at hand?

This agency looked into it.

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Fig.: Wolfheze Railway Station today.
The station design is of the “Visvliet” type that was used from 1890 to 1903 for a total of six railway stations in the Netherlands. In 1899 the station building in Wolfheze was opened. The building in Wolfheze is the last of these six still standing and hasn’t changed much over the years.
REASON FOR INVESTIGATION:
The story of an unmistakably beautiful girl keeping British paratroopers and glider soldiers from doing their jobs because her looks distract them, speaks to the imagination of a few members of this agency. The fact that the scene took place on a railway station passed-by regularly, by us commuting to work, fueled a desire to try and answer the question who this girl may have been.

Spoiler alert
We must warn the reader at this stage , that on the day of publication of this case file, the riddle has NOT been solved and it is still an ongoing investigation. The reason for publication however, is to share our methods of investigation, give insights in our trains of thought, explain how battle detectives develop hypotheses and use deduction to eliminate unlikely or impossible scenarios.

SYNOPSIS:
 Author Martin Middlebrook has not mentioned the source for the Railway Station Girl story. He boldly stated that rumor may have had it that the girl was the daughter of the station master but that this is untrue. He also mentioned the charming effect that the girl had on a person who could be identified without much effort. Although Middlebrook did use a handful of footnotes in "Arnhem 1944", there are none explaining the origin of the information for this paragraph.
Gripped by the thought of identifying the particularly pretty girl, we therefor had to start from the text of the story.

Railway Station Master of Wolfheze
From a website about the history of railway stations in the Netherlands we learned that until 9 JUN1942, an Albertus Nicolaas Zeldenrust was station master of Wolfheze. His career apparently ended on that date. He was 55 years old at the time. It was not until 1DEC1949 that a new station master named Hendrik Hattuma arrived, who was then 52 years old.
In the section Wolfheze of the telephone directory of 1943, the telephone number of the Station is listed under Dutch Railways: 224.
In the daily reports of the Municipal Police Oosterbeek, it is noted on 17SEP1944 that at
"12.20 De Ruiter, acting station master at Wolfheze, reports bomb attack at Wolfheze station (direct hit), four houses hit by direct hits, everything rubble and dust, people are still in air raid shelters."
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Fig.: Now&Then comparisons of damage to buildings close to the Wolfheze railway station as reported by acting station master (De) Ruiter. From top to bottom:
Top) The hotel next to the railway station;
Center) The Sonneheerdt building on the grounds of the lunatic asylum
across the road from the railway station;
Bottom) The church on the grounds of the lunatic asylum
 
The damage report was almost certainly received by telephone, otherwise it would have said "came to report" or "came to the station", or words to that effect. The caller, deputy stationmaster De Ruiter, probably made the call from the telephone with number 224. He could be the same person as the "J. Ruiter Boschb. De Ginkel" listed in the telephone directory with number 223.
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Fig.: Listing of all telephone numbers in Wolfheze in the directory of 1943.

Remarkably enough, that is a single number lower than the number of the railway station.
It is plausible that this mr Ruiter was the station master of Wolfheze in 1944; albeit acting.

In the (Reconstructed) Population Register of the Municipality of Renkum we found that “Ruiter, G.” is listed as follows:
Occupation: forest worker
Date of establishment: 10-10-1941
Address: Buunderkamp 17, Wolfheze
Municipality: Renkum
Originating from: Ede
When we visited the Gelderland Regional Archive on Friday 6JUN2025, we were told that the population registers of the municipalities of Renkum and Arnhem were destroyed during World War Two. Hence the addition of "reconstructed" in the name of the collection in the archive. The register only exists in a digital format. After the war information was gathered from all kinds of sources to reconstruct the administration of residents in the towns and villages of the municipality of Renkum. We found that the source of the details about G. Ruiter originates from a publication of changes in the population of the municipality of Renkum in the Arnhemsche Courant of 13OCT1941:
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Fig.: Publication by the municipality of Renkum of entry of G. Ruiter
as a resident in Wolfheze in the Arnhemsche Courant of Monday October 13th 1941

Neither the publication nor the reconstructed population register list G. Ruiter’s date of birth or whether more people reside on Buunderkamp No. 17.
It is therefore unconfirmed that this is the acting station master of Wolfheze.

Sacked Station Master
An exciting detail is the personnel file of the previous station master, Albertus Nicolaas Zeldenrust, who was transferred to Wolfheze on 1JUN1937 to be summarily dismissed on 10JUN1942 because of “dishonesty”. There are no details mentioned as to the nature of the dishonesty on this day during the German occupation of the Netherlands.
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Fig.: Wolfheze station master Zeldenrust’s personnel file
with in bold letters his summary dismissal for dishonesty in 1942

Ginger-haired War Correspondent
The Public Relations team under Major R. W. Oliver present at the Battle of Arnhem consisted of himself, as a Public Relations Officer, two BBC civilian broadcasters (Stanley Maxted and Guy Byam), two newspaper journalists (Alan Wood of the Daily Express and Jack Smyth of Reuters), two censors (Captains Brett and Williams), three men of the Army Film and Photographic Unit (Sergeants Mike Lewis, Dennis Smith and Gordon Walker), and four signallers (Butcher, Cull, Hardcastle, and Noon).
Of these newsmen, Jack Smyth is known to have had red hair.
Smyth was a man of mystery. In 1956 he wrote the book "Five Days in Hell: The Battle of Arnhem, 1944" and was viewed rather disdainfully by Arnhem researchers. His book describes the fantastic claim that he jumped into Arnhem without any parachute training. That Smyth actually jumped is a matter of record as "Jack Smith War Correspondent" is on the jump manifests. However Martin W. Bowman’s 2013 book "Air War Market Garden - So Near and Yet So Far" ISBN 9781783468881, describes the recollections of Lieutenant Joseph Winston "Pat" Glover, the 10th Battalion’s Quartermaster, who mentioned a war correspondent asking him for a crash course on the ins and outs of parachute jumping!
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Fig.: Left) Eileen Smyth and her husband Jack Smyth photographed after World War Two.
Right) Jack Smiith's photo enhanced and colorized with Artificial Intelligence

Particularly Pretty Girl
We had good hopes that Jack Smyth’s book would give a clue or, better yet, a repetition of the story of the pretty girl in Wolfheze. We found, however, in Chapter V "The first prisoners" on page 34 the only story in the book involving Wolfheze in connection to a female:
"[…] As we passed the sanatorium, doctors, nurses and convalescents crowded round us cheering hysterically and clapping us on the backs.
During the diversionary bombing of the surrounding woods their kitchen had received a direct hit, they said. But they didn’t care. The only food they could offer us was fresh fruit and milk. These they brought out from the sanatorium in huge quantities. The fruit was piled high in wicker-baskets; the milk overflowed from huge, earthenware jars.
Then, one of those things happened that can only happen to me. I had removed my jump-helmet to wipe the sweat from my forehead. And an old lady spotted my red hair. She hobbled on crutches over to me, waving excitedly a piece of paper.
It was an Irish Hospitals Trust Sweepstake ticket on the 1939 Grand National. The nom-de-plume on the back read: "Granny’s Lucky Day".
I said: “Sorry, but I’m afraid that race is over, Grans."
"Yaw! Yaw!" she croaked back, and everyone howled with laughter.
Having enjoyed our first taste of Dutch hospitality, we pushed on through the woods until we came to a large clinic standing in the center of a clearing."

Hypothesis
Because Jack Smyth was married he may have not wanted it to be known to the general public, and much less to his wife, that it was he who was so impressed by a Dutch girl that he forgot to report on the ongoing battle. This may have resulted in him telling a story that may have involved an astonishing young lady in Wolfheze whom he changed into an old lady on crutches.
Case Chart
We mapped our investigative leads, discoveries and working hypotheses in the following chart:
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Fig.: Chart showing leads, discoveries and conclusions of the investigation
Girls in the Wolfheze area
From several publications we gathered up all images of girls interacting with British airborne soldiers in the Wolfheze, Oosterbeek and Renkum area on the first days of Operation "Market Garden". We then evaluated the probability of each individual girl being the particularly pretty girl at the railway station. Unfortunately this path didn’t yield a conclusive candidate.
(click to enlarge)

Fig.: Chart showing the “usual suspects” and the
rating of likelihood of them being the Wolfheze Railway Station Girl.

Artificial Intelligence
To get an idea of what the scene described by Martin Middlebrook must have looked like, we asked Chat GTP to recreate the image of the pretty girl at the railway station talking to British soldiers and a ginger-haired war correspondent. The software created these images:
(click to enlarge)

 Fig.: Images created by Arteficial Intelligence
 

CONCLUSION:
After following up on the leads about the station master and the girl and the subsequently developed working hypothesis that J. Ruiter was the acting station master, we still have some unanswered questions:
1) Did J. (de) Ruiter have a daughter?
2) Why did Smyth not mention the girl?
3) Who was the lady with the lottery ticket?
4) Moreover: What was Middlebrook’s source for his paragraph about the girl and him stating that she wasn’t the station master’s daughter?
The reader is encouraged to compare notes and share any insights, information and thoughts that could potentially shed more light on the mystery of the girl in Wolfheze.


EXHIBITS:
AI images that did not make it to the original paragraph about Artificial Intelligence. This was either because of bad habits shown, or depicting a more frivolous version of the girl than what this agency had in mind when envisioning the Wolfheze Railway Station Girl.

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