War veteran walked around with this shrapnel embedded in his thigh... for 68 years!

When Ronald Brown’s grand- children tried to sit on his knee, he always asked them to avoid the  left thigh.
It was not until he died at the age of 94 that they discovered why.
Almost 1lb of shrapnel was embedded in his leg after he stepped on a landmine during World War II.

Shock: Mr Brown's family said they knew metal had been left in his leg but they were stunned to see just how many fragments the former soldier had lived with for almost 70 years

The metal, which he had carried around for more than 68 years, was sifted from his ashes following his cremation and presented to his family.
‘It’s amazing because he never used to complain about the pain,’ said his daughter Jane Madden, 55, from Exeter. ‘It just shows how brave he was.’
Mr Brown, from Hull, joined the East Yorkshire Regiment in 1939 at the age of 21, and served as a quartermaster. He was evacuated from Dunkirk, then went on to fight at El Alamein before helping to liberate Sicily.

Stoical: The metal was embedded in Ronald Brown's thigh after he stepped on a booby trap as a young soldier during World War II

In June 1944, on manoeuvres in France, he set off the booby-trap device and his left leg was peppered with red-hot fragments of metal. He was forced to crawl two miles to safety.
Because of the primitive medical conditions in battle, it was thought safer to leave the shrapnel in his body.
Mr Brown, who went on to become a tax inspector in Exeter, told his two children only scant details of the incident, which he said had left him with a ‘bad knee’.
Mrs Madden, whose mother Gwendoline died 24 years ago, added: ‘He’d said there was a bullet in his leg but I was imagining one piece of metal.
‘When we went to scatter his ashes we asked whether the bullet had been found and they gave us this bag full of metal.’
Holly Madden, 25, one of Mr Brown’s five grandchildren, said he never spoke much about the war.
‘He would travel overseas to Australia and America and he was always setting off scanners as he walked through. We always thought it was a bullet in the knee but when the funeral directors gave us this bag of shrapnel they had taken out we were shocked at how much there was.
‘The bits of metal in him just show how horrible the war was.
‘I suppose it’s a bitter-sweet memory for us because it symbolises everything he did and how he suffered. It’s amazing that he walked around with it in his leg  for so long.
‘He walked normally. He was an active man too. He used to go on  a daily walk.’

Ronald Brown's proud daughter Jane Madden, right, and granddaughter Holly Madden, left, look at photographs of the World War II veteran

Miss Madden said her grandfather kept a journal of his wartime experiences, in which he claimed to have introduced the delicacy of egg and chips to the people of France. He also described how, of the 900 original members of his regiment, only 29 came home from the front.
His daughter is offering the  journal either to Mr Brown’s old regiment or the Imperial War Museum. She said: ‘He had a  good life and did a lot in his time. We’re all so proud of him.’

Proud: Ronald Brown (centre) is seen in uniform in South Africa with a fellow soldier and a Zulu warrior