Matt! And Eirikur! You are my heroes!
Eirikur, I see you were suggesting similar but I clearly did not interpret the converted emoticons back correctly.
But Matt, yours enabled me to get the data finally without any struggle! I am ecstatic and so appreciative to you both for taking the time to help. I would never have come right and Matt, your comment about namespaces wreaking havoc is enlightening and provides some sort of explanation why I struggled so much with something so apparently simple. I first struggled with this with a SSIS package until I eventually resorted to an XQuery. From what I see I would never have come right with SSIS.

If anyone has any further clarification on the issue with the file content provided to me I would appreciate it as I would like to get back to the provider of the Web Service where I receive the data from.