It could get kinda chunky depending upon the filesize, but you could store the data as a string and

string.split("<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""UTF-8""?>")

Or string.replace("<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""UTF-8""?>" & vbCrLf, "")

That is, if you know it is coming from a windows machine. Otherwise, you would need to find out how they do their CRs or just ommit the & vbCrLf since when you read in the xml it doesnt care about white space.