WOUNDED BOY’S PLUCK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLII, Issue 9474, 6 March 1922, Page 7

WOUNDED BOY’S PLUCK.

SWIMS WITH SHATTERED LEG. The right leg of Walter Johnson, 16, was taken off recently at the Paul Kimball Memorial Hospital in Lakewood, New Jersey, which is Walter’s home town. The boy grinned when he came out of the anaesthetic. He told the surgeons he imagined it would be queer not having two “regular” legs, but there ought to be “some way of fixing him up” with an artificial one. He was trying not to be downhearted. Opinion among the surgeons was that Walter was about the pluckiest youth they ever had met. There wasn’t the slightest use trying to save his right leg. The day before while Walter and George White, his chum, were gunning in a rowboat half a mile off shore at the headwaters of Barnegat Bay a flock of ducks rose, and reaching excitedly for the shot-gun, White knocked it off the seat. It fired, the load from: both barrels ripping into Walter’s leg and foot*and tearing a hole in the bottom of the boat. The boat filled and was down to the gunwhale almost before the boys realised what had happened. Walter, in spite of the pain of his wound, kept his nerve, and took command of the situation; White is two years his junior. “We’ll have to swim,” he told White. “I’ll make it somehow. Come on.” Walter could’nt move his wounded leg, but he leaned over the side of the sinking boat and splashed into the water. White followed. Somehow the boys made the swim ashore in the chill, wintry water, Walter propelling himself with' only one kicking leg. Toward the end White began to give out, and Walter shouted to him not to give up. Walter’s own progress was very slow. While the shore line still appeared to the boys to be a great way off Walter’s kicking foot struck a sand bar. Both boys rested there before finishing the trip to the mainland. 1 The cold water had . served to check the flow of blood. Reaching shore Walter dropped exhausted, and White ran off for aid. Rescuers took Walter in an automobile to the hospital after a temporary dressing had been made and ■ blankets wrapped about his wet clothes. So far he has developed no complications that micht have resulted from exposure. Wealthy folk are taking up a “hero fund” for him at the Laurel House. Walter has t>een an important supporting arm for a family left orphans by the death of tlieir parents three years ago. An aunt took four of the children to her home in Manhattan, but the others remained in Lakewood to shift for themselves. Joseph, the oldest brother, an assistant porter at the Laurel House, married and provided a home for Walter and the two younger brothers. The care of the younger lads has fallen chiefly on, Walter, who has been working at odd jobs.