Tex Banwell

Sergeant Keith Deamer "Tex" Banwell BEM (8 October 1917 – 25 July 1999) was a soldier in the British Army in the Second World War.

His father served with the Australian Imperial Force, and Banwell lived in Australia from 1920 until he returned to England in 1936 to join the Coldstream Guards.

He later transferred to 1st Battalion, the Hampshire Regiment, and served in India, Palestine and then Egypt, where he was a temporary physical training instructor, and was given the nickname "Tex".

Banwell escaped again with some friends on a stolen assault landing craft, but they ran out of fuel and drifted for nine days before reaching the coast of North Africa.

He took the codename "Tex", and was involved in several resistance ambushes of the occupying Germans - including an action near the town of Putten on 1 October 1944, after which 600 local men were arrested and deported to Neuengamme concentration camp.

Eventually, Banwell was captured by the Germans again; he was flown to Berlin and interrogated by the Gestapo about his connections with the Dutch resistance.