VERY UNLUCKY MAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20768, 10 January 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

VERY UNLUCKY MAN.

REMARKABLE LIFE STORY

MANY WAR AND OTHER INJURIES

In a small bedroom at the top of a house in St. Pandas, London, a Daily Mail reporter lately met a man who is probably one of tho most unlucky but yet one of the happiest in the world. The man is Sergeant A. M. Nichols, a St. Dunstan's man, who has no eyes, no hands and very few ribs, and he is recovering from his fifth motoring accident, which has left him with one of his good ribs broken, two others badly damaged, a lacerated knee and concussion.

On top of this Sergeant Nichols has developed pleurisy and bronchitis. Whereever he goes he runs into misfortune, but every time fa to deals him a blow he laughs and says, " Well, boys, we are not dead vet."

Sergeant Nichols, who is 41 but looks no more than 60, said : " When the war broke out I was a Reservist, aged 25, and I was called up. But I was not an Old Contemptible " for very long, for, on September 20, 1914, they hit mo in the leg with two bullets and some shrapnel. In 1915 I was involved in a premature explosion of bombs and was injured again.

A colleague and 1 were demonstrating how lo blow up a barricade. By mistake an iuslantaneous fuse instead of a time fuse had been fixed to the high explosive, and my colleague and 1 got it all. My pal died after 24 hours, while I lost my eyes and my hands and in addition got 500 wounds—at least that was the doctors' estimate.

" The late Sir Alfred Fripp sawed away the ribs on my loft side, took out the shrapnel, and in a month's time I won a dancing competition. " I learned to ride a tandem cycle—on the back seat, of course. There was another chap at St. Dunstan's, wlio had lost all but one finger of his two hands, and we arranged a tandem ride from London to Brighton. We started at 4 a.m. one Saturday morning from Westminster and were within eight miles of Brighton when I was thrown off. My head struck the hub of a motor car and the back wheel severed one of my artificial hands.

" I now do propaganda work for St. Dunstan's. I travel all over the west and south-west of England in a motorcar, and it is amazing how I run into mishaps. I have had five of them, and every time I get knocked out. " I told the doctor yesterday that I wanted to get up because I have a lot of letters to type —oh, yes, I can type all right on my special machine—but he said I could not as I had developed bronchitis. Come round and see me next week: I expect I shall have appendicitis. 1 haven't had that yet."