LEGLESS HERO
“I’VE STILL GOT MY HANDS.” LONDON, August .10. Tommy Burns, 20-year-old Manchester fly-weight boxer, lost both legs at Dunkirk —but he wants a “return match.” “When I get home I’ll have to start thinking seriously of how I can get back to this war. I want to do my bit right to the end,” he declared this week, as he wheeled himself along the corridor of a northern hospital. “My legs were smashed at Dunkirk,” he said. “When I was in a shack, holding up the Germans with my Bren gun, I was trapped. Streams of machine-gun bullets were pouring in at both sides of me and I couldn’t get out. But I did some damage before they planted a mortar shell on me. I am still young and hope to have a lot of fun yet. I want to do a bit more in this war yet. The doctor says I shall be walking on artificial limbs in a month. That will suit me fine. True they have put paid to my legs, but I have still got these”—here he held up his hands and clasped them above his head in the true boxei- manner—“so I can work on munitions.”
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Greymouth Evening Star, 17 September 1940, Page 8
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203LEGLESS HERO Greymouth Evening Star, 17 September 1940, Page 8
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