Howard's Left Foot

Howard Sides Army Hospital 194
Note the direction his left foot has taken


I met my Howard Sides, my father-in-law, in 1995 when I began dating my husband. He died the slow death cancer offers eleven years ago, but he never complained, even at the very last. I hope I can meet my end with as much grace.

Howard landed on Normandy Beach eight days after D-Day as part of a reconnaissance unit to search bombed-out buildings and the terrain for future campains. It was on this tour that he lost his leg.

Howard never talked about the war until the last year of his life, and at one point expressed interest in seeing Saving Private Ryan, but wanted us to see it first and let him know if he'd like it. My husband told Howard a little about it, and he decided he'd rather not see the film.

I asked Howard to tell me how he lost his leg, and he told me that he had just exited a building, saw a German Panzer turn the corner, and he turned to warn his comrades, and the next thing he knew he woke up three days later covered in blood. The shell blew the heel off his left foot,and the big toe off his right foot. Gangrene would claim the rest of left leg up to his knee. Howard said that the cold kept him from freezing to death as he and another man waited in various stages of consciousness, three days for help to arrive. That last year he called the other survivor who had laid there with him, and the man filled in the gaps of what had transpired during that three day wait.

Howard had a michievious sense of humor. While recovering in the hospital, he held wheelchair races.His wife Betty recounted that Howard would purposely attach his leg backwards and then walk into cafes as if it were perfectly normal for his left foot to face the opposite direction. He absolutely loved to dance. That he had one leg never deterred him from "shaking a leg" whenever the opportunity to dance presented itself, sometimes by firelight, like at the family campouts in the Uintahs.

When my daughter was four, Howard asked her to pull his leg, she did, and the leg came off. Instead of the reaction he expected, she laughed.