D-Day hero Ken Foster and his wife Vera are planning their honeymoon – 75 years after they wed.
The couple never had time as newlyweds, as Ken was recovering from losing a leg in the Second World War and Vera had to go back to work.
When Ken came round after his amputation, he had thought his 18-year-old sweetheart would not want a man with only one leg.
But Vera, 94, said: “Many injured men were getting letters from wives or sweethearts giving them up.
“But as far as I’m concerned it is the man himself who counts.”
Ken, 97, met Vera on his first ever holiday and they had an instant connection.
They had to part when he enlisted in a Yorkshire regiment and went to train for D-Day.
He says of the invasion in June 1944: “We didn’t know the plan.
“We were in tents in camps and then suddenly we were off and crossing the Channel.”
Ken, who worked as a telephone engineer for 34 years after the war, added: “We were on an anti-tank battery and I got unlucky when a shell came in.
“I saw me boot with a sock go up in the air and I looked down and my foot were hanging on by bits of skin.
“It was like my leg had been put in a bucket of boiling hot water. When we got to the first aid centre, the first thing you got was a pot of hot, sweet tea.
“They put a dressing on the wound and then did an operation in a field hospital.
“It didn’t worry me so much; losing Vera was all I could think about.”
The couple were married at St Cecilia’s Church in Sheffield six months later.
Their three children are now 73, 72 and 75.
Vera says: “We got married on Saturday and I went back home and he went back to hospital on Monday morning, no honeymoon.
“I went back to my job as a nursery nurse while he was in and out of hospital.
“But this year we’re going to Eastbourne which is where we would have gone.
“You’ve got to work at being married. There’s no his and hers, it’s all ours. We had hard times but we are lucky with the lives we have had.”
Ken is a member of Blesma, the limbless veterans' charity. Its operations director Ian Waller adds: "Ken is a great example of the spirit of that generation. He lost his leg to conflict but viewed it as a minor setback. He worked till he was 60 and the couple have been determined to be independent for as long as they can. They are 97 and 95 and still going strong – we salute them."
