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Caption: Briny Breezes resident and 101st Airborne Infantry Division, 502nd Parachute Battalion veteran Ed Manley returned to Normandy on the 50th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1994, to jump again.


Through good, bad and worse, he’s lived life ‘full tilt’
Ed Manley grew up in a foster home because his father was dead and his mother was too poor to take care of him. She visited him on weekends.
He learned life the hard way, he says: on the streets. But he has no complaints and considers himself a lucky guy.
Don’t get old. That’s his maxim.
Just add a good-sized dollop of luck, and there you have it — the path that Manley, 87, follows.
At 20, he signed up as an army paratrooper, and was assigned to 502nd Parachute Battalion. It was re-designated 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment and joined by the 101st Airborne Infantry Division in September 1942.
With his regiment, he participated in three major battles during the war: the Battle of Normandy, June 6, 1944; Operation Market Garden in Holland, Sept. 17, 1944; and the Battle of the Bulge, Dec. 17, 1944, in Bastogne against the German Ardennes Offensive.
For D-Day, he was part of an 11-man team whose objective was to blow up four coastal cannons overlooking Omaha Beach. In September, the 502nd made its second drop in Holland; its mission was to seize roads, bridges and a key communication city, Eindhoven. In December, the 101st Airborne was ordered to Bastogne. While the 101st was fighting the Fifth Panzer Army, the 502nd held positions to the north and northwest portions of the envelopment. Manley was wounded in Bastogne on Jan. 3, 1945, captured and held at Stalag 12A for four and a half months before he escaped.
Manley received two Bronze Stars — from Normandy and Bastogne, a Purple Heart and two presidential citations. He’s still a lucky guy, he says. Just two months ago, he underwent a triple bypass. He taps his chest. “I heal fast. Nothing there.”
His doctors wouldn’t let him stay home alone after the operation. As luck would have it, some new friends offered to take him in.
“At their place, the whole back wall is glass,” he said. “I look at their swimming pool, grass, trees and all the foliage. What are the odds of that?”
At 87, he looks at life with gusto. Live life full tilt, be a participant. And when the end comes, he wants his ashes dropped in the Gulf Stream. “I’m taking the cheap seats back to Ireland,” he says. “My family and friends can spend the money on a party.”
— Christine Davis

Q. Where did you grow up and go to school? How do you think that has influenced you?
A. I was born in 1921. My dad died two months before I was born, and my mother was an orphan. She lived with showgirls and was the only one with a steady job — she put the food on the table. She got walk-ons on different Broadway shows, and that would get her $5. She shipped me out to a babysitter in New Jersey from the time I was 3 until I was old enough to go the Gould Foundation’s home in Harlem. I lived at the group home from when I was 5 until I was 11 years old. Then, my mother married my stepdad, and they took me out of the home. I went to Bayside High School in Bayside, Long Island.
I had to learn to be streetwise when I was at the home in Harlem. On Saturdays, all the kids from the home had 15 cents for the movies. The street kids knew it. On the way to the movies, I wandered away from my group, and this 13-year-old boy cut me four or five inches across the leg with a strap razor, but I was carrying a broken Coke bottle and buried it in his solar plexus. They took me home, cleaned me up and I went to the movies. On D-Day, we were an 11-man team and we were supposed to blow up four coastal cannons overlooking Omaha Beach. We were dropped eight miles from the location. I wound up being the point man to draw fire. The sergeant in charge wanted me to walk down this road. I took a few steps and saw there was no place to hide. Because of my street training, I decided I was going to walk behind the hedges, but the hedges didn’t start for 50 feet, so I walked a few feet, and I did a 90 degrees. My thinking was, if he shot me for diverting, he’d have to be the point man.
He followed the road. After I bypassed a T-intersection. I heard firing. I ducked through and saw the sergeant in a ditch firing his automatic, actually dueling with two Germans with Mauser rifles. One of the Germans was kneeling and the other was standing and they were taking turns firing at him. I picked them off. They were my first kill. The sergeant and I became best friends. How I grew up helped me a lot in circumventing things that the average youngster would walk into. I could see that stuff before I got there.
Q. What is your strongest memory of the war?
A. Watching guys that I couldn’t help. I was in three different invasions, in France, Holland and Bastogne. In Holland in particular, I had a friend who was 10 feet away from me. I tried to help him three or four different times, but the German machine guns kept me back and I watched him die. And at Stalag 12A: On Jan. 3, 1945, 240 of us, the D and F companies, went in (to Bastogne) and the Germans shot up our whole unit. Only 22 of us came out. If you couldn’t walk, the Germans — they were SS — shot you. They only took three of us who were wounded. I was the most wounded. I was a prisoner for four and a half months, and during that time, I had not received medical attention. I’m a very fortunate guy; the lice kept my wounds open. Hitler was going to make a human wall around Berlin and the Germans were going to use us as a buffer against the American advances, and one day, while they were marching us there, six of us escaped. Five of us made it through the lines.
Q. What advice do you have for a young person selecting a career today?
A. Work for the government. It’s the only steady job that you can get. If you are capable of going military, go military.
Q. After the war, what did you do?
A. When I first came home, I didn’t work for a year. For the first 52 weeks, I got $20 a week. I became even better at darts and with a cue, which I learned while I was based in England for our 11 months training for D-Day. Other than that, I’ve worked all my life. Then I took the New York state police test. While I was waiting to get in, I worked security at the Belmont Race Track.
While I was working for the state police, for extra money, I also worked as a flag man directing traffic in civilian clothes, because, by then, I had children.
Then I became a runner for a concrete company, dealing with their truckers. I worked on a tanker on the Great Lakes. I was a lumber salesman and a theater manager.
My wife, Dorothy Ann, died 25 years ago. I have three kids: James Edward, 53, Kimberly Ann, 51, and Scott, 49. Scott’s the guy now. He was a hard rock guitar player and he’s now a pastor in a church in Washington State.
Q. How did you end up in Briny Breezes?
A. When my wife passed away, I had a 24-foot sailboat, and I’d come to Florida from Ocean City, Md., in November. I’d take my boat out of the lagoon, and fuel the boat up. A guy there found out I was on my way to Florida, and he told me to give him a jingle when I got to Boynton Beach. So, I pulled in to Two Georges, and I’m having a beer, and called him up. He told me to come under the bridge, and he’d wave me down.
I had no intention of buying, but we walked across to the ocean and I saw Briny and I asked, “How do you get one of these things? And I bought the lot for $15,000. My lot in Delaware cost me $10,000.
They don’t come any luckier than me. Even when I got shot, it went through my leg, and didn’t harm any major bones or blood vessels.
Q. What is your favorite part about living in Briny?
A. I don’t want to sell. Where will you find a place like this? I have the ocean, and dockage when I need it.
Q. What book are you reading now?
A. I never read. I made a book report on Treasure Island three times. Swashbucklers — that was my trip. I have to live it myself. I want to be participant and I’m a hell of an adviser. I don’t go in partially. I go in full tilt.
Q. What music do you listen to when you need inspiration? When you want to relax?
A. The big bands. I like to dance. I like good music. I’m not big on vocals. I’m not a Frank Sinatra fan. I like instrumentation.
Q. If your life story were made into a movie, who would you want to play you?
A. Me.
Q. Who or what makes you laugh?
A. Life in general. I laugh every day. I can see humor. If you can’t, it’s so depressing. You have to laugh.