A HOSPICE has been boosted with a donation of more than £2,000 thanks to sales of a war veteran’s book which was published posthumously.

The Severn Hospice, which has a shop on Back Lane, Newtown, has received £2,034,91 through the proceeds of sales of ‘All Hands on Deck’ by the late John Burke.

Mr Burke, from Caerhowel near Montgomery, was just 18 years old when he took part in the D-Day Normandy landings in June 1944, serving in the Royal Navy as a Radar Plotter on board HMS Enterprise.

A plotters job was to observe the radar – keeping an eye on aerial and sea contacts and passing on the information to the captain and ship’s officers.

At the time radar operations were top secret.

This meant that plotters were not supposed to tell anyone what they were actually doing.

Mr Burke recorded his thoughts and observations of being a teenager involved in one of the major battles of the Second World War, writing them in secret on various scraps of paper, which he later put together to form a booklet.

He died in 2017 aged 91 and his widow, Katie, pledged to finish the book he had been writing on his experiences at the invasion of Normandy and get it published.

Having done so at her own expense, she then worked tirelessly to sell the book wherever she could.

The book has been on sale at the Severn Hospice shops around the area and Katie has also sold copies herself at Welshpool Market.

Thanks to Katie’s hard work, she has been able to donate more than £2,000 to Severn Hospice.

She said: “Two years ago my husband died and we had the assistance of Severn Hospice who came and looked after him for the last week of his life and didn’t charge.

“He kept a diary of his time in the Navy and I am proud that so many people have shown an interest in his story.

“I have had another lot of books printed.”

In 2016 Mr Burke, known as ‘Curly Burke’ by his comrades, was awarded the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government for his service in the liberation of France during the war.