Boardman WWII veteran lost legs, not passion for life

By Alison Kemp

BOARDMAN — Dan Burlon always tells the story of the day he lost his legs.

This isn’t a hazy, just-remembers-the-general-gist-of-things day.

This is a vivid, he-remembers-what-people-said day.

It was March 22, 1945. He was near Mainz, Germany, serving with the 10th Armored Division of Patton’s Third Army. He was on a half-track, a lightly armored vehicle traveling behind a tank.

Suddenly, Burlon said, the tank in front of him “took a hit.”

He could see the three men who did it, so he fired his .50-caliber machine gun at them.

The first man went down with a shot in the chest; the second with shots in the neck and back; and the third with a shot to the chest.

Burlon called to three fellow soldiers with him in the back of the half-track, telling them they should get off the vehicle.

“I put one foot on the edge of that [the back of the half-track] to jump off. Instead of jumping, I went straight up in the air” as the half-track exploded, Burlon said.

Burlon, who turns 90 on Thursday, tells this story from a chair in his Boardman living room, quite content and ready to have a new listener.

His daughter, Patti Harmon, said her father loves to talk about the day that won him a Purple Heart, and will tell anyone who will listen about his time in World War II. Her father’s doctors said the best therapy for him is to talk about the battle he was in and how he lost his legs.

Burlon’s military career began in California and Texas. Then he went to New York, and from there he took a boat to England. “That’s when the war started for me,” he said. From there, he said he went up the English Channel and landed in France.

As Burlon lay on the ground following the attack, he wondered why he couldn’t move. When he discovered it was because one of his legs had been blown off, he said he said to himself, “Do I have to die all the way out here?”

Then he heard a voice he recognized: A a medic who he had had a small fight with earlier that day. He said he couldn’t pick up Burlon right then, that he’d have to come back for him. The medic also said Burlon’s buddies, the other three guys in the half-track, were dead.

When the medic took Burlon back to camp, his legs were amputated. The doctor there told him, “Dan, you’re not doing too bad.” Burlon was surprised at this because he had lost both of his legs.

He was moved to Paris, which is where he found out that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died. He continued to make progress there.

“You won’t believe this. I started feeling a little better,” Burlon said. So he flew to the U.S., to Percy Jones General Hospital in Battle Creek, Mich. While his stumps finished healing there, he participated in exercises and received artificial limbs.

Burlon returned home to Youngstown in March 1946.

Friends of his began campaigning for funds for him shortly after his return.

Eventually, Burlon knew it was time to go back to work, so he went to the training office to look for a job. He took the civil service test so he could get a job with a government agency.

He got a job talking to other veterans at the Veteran’s Administration office. He bought a lot in Boardman so he could build a house. But then the VA closed, Burlon said, and he didn’t want to follow his job to Cleveland.

He interviewed at Wilkoff Steel Co. in Youngstown to be a weighmaster. When he got there, he was asked to balance two scales. He completed the task properly, was offered the job, and was asked if he wanted to start that afternoon.

Burlon decided to start the next morning, and never missed a day of work for 29 years, he said.

Harmon said her father didn’t act like he was handicapped when he returned. He drove everywhere and didn’t have mobility problems.

“He really contributed to society when he came back,” she said.

Some people weren’t even aware that Burlon had lost his legs.

Burlon told a story about some workers from a different company who came to see him because he was wearing a brown shoe and a black shoe.

He wasn’t wearing two black shoes because one of his artificial legs was being repaired. It was returned to him before the visitors arrived, so they asked Burlon about the mismatched shoes they had heard about. Burlon’s response was for them to look in his trunk, which is where he stored his second set of legs.

It was obvious to Burlon that none of the men who were questioning his shoes knew that he had lost his legs.

Burlon’s grandson, Dan Harmon, went to visit his grandfather almost every day when he was a child. When he was young, he didn’t know his grandfather had lost his legs in battle.

“I never really knew the true extent until I got older,” Dan Harmon said.

There was no reason to assume that his grandfather was disabled, he said. He walked fine, and Harmon never questioned his grandfather’s use of canes.

And, his artificial limbs never stopped him from being a good grandfather.

Dan Harmon said his grandparents were always around, picking him up from school or attending his sporting events. He said they did “the normal stuff that grandparents do.”

But the fact that his grandfather did all of this without any hindrance caused Dan Harmon to pause.

“I guess, more than anything, he’s a true success story,” he said. “He’s the kindest, nicest person I’ve ever met.”

akemp@vindy.com