William Hutchison Murray (18 March 1913–19 March 1996) was a Scottish mountaineer and writer, one of a group of active mountain climbers, mainly from Clydeside, before and just after World War II.
Murray did much of his most influential climbing in the period just before WW2. He climbed on many occasions with the slightly older J. H. B. Bell.
At the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was posted to the Mi...
more
William Hutchison Murray (18 March 1913–19 March 1996) was a Scottish mountaineer and writer, one of a group of active mountain climbers, mainly from Clydeside, before and just after World War II.
Murray did much of his most influential climbing in the period just before WW2. He climbed on many occasions with the slightly older J. H. B. Bell.
At the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was posted to the Middle East and North Africa. He was captured south of Mersa Matruh during the Western Desert Campaign in a retreat to El Alamein in June 1942 by a tank commander from the 15th Panzer Division who was armed with a machine-pistol. A passage in Mountain magazine (#67, 1979) describes the moments after his capture:
He then spent three years in prisoner of war camps in Italy (Chieti), Germany (Moosberg, Brunswick) and Czechoslovakia (Marisch Trubeau Oflag VIII-F). While imprisoned, Murray wrote a book entitled Mountaineering In Scotland. The first...
less
