"I wanted to kill Hitler" - Ed Manley, 101st Airborne, D-Day (Full Interview)

because i would have been up front i thought when hitler was caught and i wanted to be the guy to kill hitler [Music] i wanted to be a radio up like my stepdad was he was on a pig boat what they call them submarines they call them big boats and uh but he got extra fee food and a lot of extra little things because he was in a submariner you know so mariner and so i was going to go into that and they turned me down and i was pretty good physically i played ice hockey everything but basketball i played and uh i could bunk better none of the guys i was a fast runner so i was i probably would have gone professional if if i'd been any longer in in the streets you know but uh as i said you played you play the cards you dealt yeah and in life and that's it and so you then chose the army paratroopers over the regular army yeah well i thought all i wanted to do was kill hitler i i wasn't a good soldier in the barracks but i was good in the field that's where you asked did i use the home and all in later life stuff i learned in there i used i used to correct a sergeant and the first couple of times i got out of here manly and uh i could come up to him i would say after he'd tell us what what he was told to tell us i would say i don't like it and i did that three different times and i was right and from then on he'd give us the information and he'd wait till the guys broke away from the formation and he'd walk over to me and say what do you think man was the best thing that that could happen to me but why why did you join the paratroopers instead of the regular army because i would have been up front i thought when hitler was caught and i wanted to be the guy to kill hitler where did you do your training benning fort benning how was that well the only thing i that scared me was they put you in a harness no parachute put you in a parachute harness and they they would lift you up facing the ground they take you up 100 feet and you had to pull the rip cord for an emergency so you had to pull that and you only dropped 10 feet but in the back of your mind if that damn thing don't it don't work you're going to go down 100 feet on the concrete you know coney island you know they the thing they had for parachute it was a control the parachute was controlled it was on a cable and you get in that harness and and the parachute held you well listening here was there was no shoot it was just the harness and you only dropped 10 feet but you had to do it that's that's why they did it that way to make sure that you would pull up the reserve you know you were also a demolition expert is that right i wasn't an expert but i was a demolition of demolition crew what kind of demolition were you trained to do well if they needed tree trunks taken out or anything in their way that uh booby traps we used to set some booby traps here and there but uh there was always uh a sergeant and an officer when you were doing that kind of stuff i know i wasn't an expert i would never consider myself an expert but it was at the time i thought it was pretty damn important well i guess it was so but i wasn't in a regular marching except on parades and stuff like that there were two two parachute men and two radio ops and they they would uh be attached to a company but but you weren't part of a squad or anything so i used to be able to sneak off to the pub have a couple of beers what unit were you assigned to 502. tell me about that well i jumped on d-day i jumped with regimental headquarters they made a special school out of 11 men and i they put me in it i didn't know anything i only knew two of the other guys in the squad of 11. and uh they dropped us in the wrong place and uh we were told the night before the picture i showed you ike speaking to the demolitions platoon when when he did that at five in the evening the next morning i was on on french soil at one o'clock we jumped one o'clock in the morning at 400 feet and it takes 175 to open and we jumped at 400 feet on d-day this group and we didn't think too much of it i was 22 years old you know rough and tumbled and i was more interested in what i was going to be doing when i get down there you know so it's funny how you look at that kind of stuff but depending on where you grew up you know and i was used to i wasn't afraid of anything really and uh but there was something i was afraid of what the hell was it you landed you didn't land where you were supposed to what happened it was therefore and we had three flights it started at midnight midnight with the first flight half past midnight with second flight and that we were the third flight first aircraft and the third flight because we were breaking away the demolition group of 11 normally is 18 and a stick we only had 11 and we were dropped out right over a road but it was in the wrong area and uh it was close to where we were supposed to be but i never saw what we were supposed to take care of heavy weapons overlooking the beach we never saw them and i saw her later in life i went back but i never saw them in combat when were you sent to england one what when were you sent to england well i'm when i first went over i went i went to uh a training school there you know but uh i had already done most of my training in the states in in benning but uh and what when did you find out that you would be jumping into normandy uh the day before i jumped it was a formation and they advised us that uh d-day was coming that's all we got out of it and uh oh and i saw that eisenhower general eisenhower he he was commander of the whole shooting match he started to get off when we were told by ike in his field at five of the evening he was on a two-step stoop had been brought out into a field so that he would be above the troops we were all standing there to listen to ike and he finished his spiel and he started to go off the two steps and he says he spins around like he was shocked he spun around he got back up on top again of the two steps and he said forgive me gentlemen he says i i've almost forgot i forgot to give you the most important thing it's the latest intelligence we have the ss are going into the private homes taking their uniforms off and wearing civilian clothes they have an idea where you're going to be jumping up until then they had the germans didn't know where where we were going to be jumping they thought it was up with it the channel the english channel was most narrow we went to the most wide to fly over and uh the first flight the aircraft had first second third flight all of them had blue red lights on the back of their wings and you could see from another aircraft so you wouldn't bump into the one in front of you and this is a one o'clock in the morning and we could see the lights of the first second and we were the third and we're flying about 800 feet in formation where we saw the first flight turn and it got through the ack-ack because the germans had the act act except for bombers and these guys were coming in at 800 feet which would be under the act act the first group just the last couple of planes the germans brought the archaic down and they caught a couple of at last of the aircraft in the first flight the second flight flew right into the arc act our pilot saw what was happening and we're looking through he had the door open so we could see and there were only 11 of us and we could see what the hell was going down we could see the road going up there uh so 400 feet and then a road went across the top well the other aircraft went up to that point and they turned left we were the first aircraft so we went over it probably a mile mile and a half the ones behind us they went like the other guys did but they were lucky because when the pilots saw what was happening into the second flight when he got shot up they they lost a lot of aircraft and what they did that was at 800 feet and what they had done they had gone up to 400 and made that turn well we hadn't made the turn yet we were still over the channel our pilot saw it he dropped down to 200 feet we got to france then he went up the other 200 feet we jumped at 400 because he was flying at two then he went back up to 400 and we jumped and then when we got on the road there was a road that we jumped along and when we got on the road i was number six in the in the string of 11. so everybody come to where i was and then sergeant says anybody know anything about where we are he says i don't he was supposed to know and uh he was our information and he says i know and he was walking as he was talking toward six seven eight houses that were all you could see with the chimneys he said i'm going to check these houses out that's exactly what the ike had told us not to do go near those houses so i said i'm not going and i stood there on the road that's what i was like i wasn't a good soldier in that sense you know i don't do things just do them i i have to have a reason and i'm never in the crowd all the pictures of you were having me i'm in the back or i'm on the end but i'm never in the senate because in the center that if there's something wrong you get a crown reaction i don't want to be in that so it's just like they told me i was crazy being a paratrooper but i'm also a sailor and i'm not going to go into rough seas in a landing craft you know what i'm saying i'd rather take a chance on the parachute so so what's it like to be in that photo in that picture with like what was that like oh that was the biggest point in my my life well when i jumped that but that was the biggest thing i've ever had to happen in my life to to be in the lead of something as big as international you know uh it's and i have people today come up to me and still thank me were shopkeepers and stuff that were working in those days and of course most of them are gone now this past november november 5th 1920 or 2020 i hit 99. i'm 99 years of age sitting here right now wow this coming november i'll be 100. only the good die young that's right so ed what was going through your mind on that flight to normandy what were you thinking well when i went out the door yeah what were you thinking survival of what i was going to do i was looking for the road i went and i wanted a good landing i wound up by hitting the tree the tree was on the 50th anniversary i went back i hadn't jumped since world war ii and i jumped in holland in september 44. and that was the last joke i made because the weather when we went to bastogne the weather was rain sleet all the bad things you could think of high winds and all so we didn't jump there they put us in tractor trailers these are paratroopers and tractor trailers going up to combat so so once you landed in normandy how did you figure out where you were and where you needed to go we we didn't know that when the sergeant did that the guys were starting just like a river they were starting to go with them you know and i said i'm not going because i was thinking about what i said he's going this guy is going to the houses which is exactly what could be bad so i said i'm not going and all the guys just faded away from me i stood there i was almost a half hour a guy comes up out of the you know how little saplings grow along a high a road that's high and it's like a ditch on the other side this guy comes up he's got his hands like this i almost shot the poor past and he says american american he says and that's all he's saying he was a american sergeant he says and uh so as long as i could see the fingers i wasn't too worried you know and i'm looking for other people and he started toward me and to start with he's only 100 feet away and he starts to walk toward me and he got halfway and all of a sudden the group comes out and they're not carrying arms like an infantryman would they got carbines slung and then like they're going on a parade ground they were glider pilots they were in this wrong place too so he and i had told oh when he's first talking to me he says uh which way is the uh english channel and i said if you turn your head you're going to see it because they were fighting down there i could see them fighting on the beach and this is still darkness you know and it was a clear night it was no problem that way but anyway the the the landings area that we went into was 400 feet high but it went down to the beach so we were 400 feet above the beach so you could see everything that was going on the original people that landed the people it brought the rest of the group in they were on the shore fighting the germans at that time what was so what was your objective it was to take out some cannons four four field pieces that were overlooked in that beach it would have saved a lot of lives if we had been able to find what happened when you got to the guns well the sergeant says to me where's your group and i said they went over to where those chimneys are i said i refuse to go because i said not to he says it's within my realm he said i'm i'm taking you aboard as a as a point man so i now i'm with americans anyway you know the other way i was by myself i'm sweating out germans coming down the road you know so i gladly took the damn job because all i had to do was get his group down to the water they had a boat waiting for them to go back to england and get more gliders and bring supplies so that that's why they were marching the way they were much but only glider pilots would i sure as hell wouldn't be in that group um so you later helped to secure a bridge in cairnton uh tell me about the fight to secure that bridge when i got with these guys i was the point man i took them down i got them down to the i almost ran into two patrols one was obviously not a combat patrol and the second one and i hit fortunately at the they had crossed the road that i was coming down so i changed roads and a little 20 minutes so a half hour later i ran into another which was a combat patrol and that was where i killed my first guy that i know that i shot he was at one of these out guys you know you have scouts out to let you know if there's any problems around or what's what's going on and this guy made the mistake he knew there was something but he didn't know what the hell it was the german and he turned around and he wasn't 75 feet from me pulled the trigger i know i killed that man but i mean he just folded but basically people will ask you how many men did you kill or you don't know you you couldn't possibly know what what the hell you're doing when you're in a fire fight you know and but when i got with these guys where i was the point man i got them down to where the i'll call it shore road the road that was alongside the english channel just like here and uh we we got down to there i ran into h company 502 and i said to the sergeant i said sarge i'm back with the 502. said you your boat would be right over in that area there he thanked me and i never even knew his name he thanked me and he went his way and i stayed with each company i hooked up with another guy that didn't have a sudden and we we did the shelter half that he had a half i had to have we had to dig down two feet for artillery stuff and we put the shelter half over there made a tent out of it you know and uh the next morning we went right back up the road i had just come down up to the 400 to the road where the other guys the airplanes turned we got to that point we turned and followed the same road but when you went about i guess it was two miles two three miles we got to another road which went down to the water again and that's where uh what the hell was the name of that town we took the town was it carrington that sounds right and but we took the town you're saying the 505 505 was able to get a different operation and uh we took the town and i was in i was in the back like i usually was i i was always in any like i told you any picture you see of me you'll never see me in a crowd and uh i'm in the middle of it because you can get hurt there you know because everybody's running into one another but anyway what happened was we took the and we came right right through we went right through the town and we're on the other side now this is h company 502 and we that's where we camped and then the next day we took the we took the town and the com when we were up at the top of that road that everybody was turning to when you got to the two or three miles and then you went down the same identical type road down the hill and when you got to the bottom of the hill that's where the town was then we went on right on through but we had picked up another company up at the top our backup they took the town over that we took we used to razz them about it would be in the pubs you know we used to really raise them about all back up wasn't that the 506 that that used to say that i i think it was 504 it was the one up on the top of it that was our backup you know we were 502 when the 504. so after the fight you were joined by the group from the 506th regiment known as the band of brothers at the bridge right yeah their story their story sometimes claims that the 506 took the bridge but you you always remind them that it was the 502nd right but it was age company 500 seconds and because the thing that screws you up a little bit is when i went into the parachute they were regime they were battalions parachute battalions while i was in there they became when we went overseas that's when they did it we became regiments and so you know and and i'm attached to people like normandy was regimental headquarters that's what they made this 11-man thing out of they weren't together all the time they were a battalion uh by themselves you were sent back to england for a bit um but oh that's that's when we went back then we did the same thing the glider guys did we got on a boat and h company we went back to england and we were on standby and twice we got on airplanes we're all set to go and it must have been patent or something because whatever the problem was they closed it up twice we went two different not in the same day or anything this is it happened two two separate days that we got on airplanes all set to go to jump then we finally we we did jump uh without holland right yep for market garden right yeah tell me about that what happened so well i was a day job it was room one o'clock in the afternoon and uh it was uh 800 feet it wasn't a 400 foot drop and uh we had uh i'm trying to think in market garden all i remember right now at prominent the guys were all in the pubs because the place was taken eindhoven that was the name of the town and uh i'll leave you and all of a sudden they'll say oh someone someone such and said but eindhoven was the name of the town and all the guys were in the pub and i always was looking for safety a place to go if something did happen i could go to which direction i would go the rest of the people they just run right i i always had to have an object to go to and i was on this looking around outside this town and there was a bend in the road like that and they had cut through a small hill to level it with the rest of the grounds around and i was on top of that thing there was a grass knoll they had taken bulldozers and gone through and leveled the road so i was on top of this grass thing and all of a sudden i heard engines going very slow at first i thought it might be a tank and i said no it can't be a tank and all of a sudden the truck came around one truck came around the damn turn and they're doing like five miles eight miles an hour they would look up or something and they came around the bend and i'm up on top of the snow and uh it's only about 12 15 feet higher than the road and they came around the bend and there's five guys five guys in the cab i took the driver then i took the guy on the door to block exits and the three guys in the middle that would then i killed the five guys then i come down i've got a german truck and uh what uh what the hell am i to do with it you know so i go back to the pub where the guys are and i'm talking to some of the guys and tell them what happened and i said we got to get that truck so okay let's go get the truck in the meantime a civilian a dutchman he's listening to the conversation at the pub and he says do you want to sell it and i said i looked at him in shock i know who the hell this guy is and he spoke better english than i do and i said you realize you're talking about american property i said that belongs to the military and he says well he says i'm opening a trucking farm after the war he says i have four garages he says i'll put parts in each of the garage that's what he was doing he i says what are you going to pay me in american and he says i have a renault there i swapped him the truck i didn't even have to touch it he's going to take it it's gone you know and i've got his little car and i had the car until we left holland the damn guy with an orange band on his arm he was i had to assume police and he was checking i had been given i used to play horn and trumpet and you carry your mouthpiece no matter where you go you don't have the horn with you but you carry your mouthpiece in case you run into a horn well this i met this family they had me come in a couple of us and myself we went in and had a coffee and and there was a horn there and i pulled my mouthpiece out of my pocket and i said you want me to play a note yeah because nobody in the family could play any longer and the valves didn't go up and down they went like this you know they swirled so it would have been priceless here and uh so i said i said to the guy he says who's who's playing it now he says you are and he gave me the wound for for saving them from the germans so that went so i went to go out of the country they took the damn truck the car and the the horn from me they didn't they didn't ask was it given to me or anything they just they assumed i picked it up or something so um i remember reading a little bit about your experience i remember reading about your experience at market garden and the fighting you did in holland was very intense in fact it's it's known as hell's highway how would you describe it well it was uh it was heavy but it wasn't as heavy as as it was in in either normandy or the uh bastard bastard was a real we ran into a tank park and there was where the tanks were the road went like this and then the the field fell away and that's where the tanks were they were in here and we were back here we couldn't see the tanks themselves but we knew they were there so the sergeant went out in front the the crew of the mortar 60 millimeter water they had uh the americans they had been killed apparently by a artillery because there was no shrapnel it had to be explosion that knocked the three guys over they were on the on the water so i forced man private i got title and frank tiedemann was here and eddie supinski was here and they were feeding the water the sergeant was where he could see down into where the tanks were and he was going hand signals so they drop one in and then go stop you know and uh i still laugh about it now but it was serious as hell at the time and it was important but uh little things like that you know were really big things and then one of the tanks came around behind us and that's what got me it went in two inches from my hip bone went through missed my privates went through came out here four holes and i had winter underwear on and apparently that's what stopped the blood from showing because if the germans had seen the blood three rounds they had it down to a science right here and their own they never carried medics and with the ss that's the shock troops the regular german army had medical assistance with them with the yes they felt that i asked later on about well what the hell why would you kill your own men because you take one or two other men off the line to help the one guy that's hurt so they lose three rifles instead of one and that's why the ss did what they did tell me about that experience where you where you're where scott says you cried out you cried out to in prayer god please help me what happened well what what was happening was the tank was sitting behind us no more than 150 feet away with the engine just pouring apparently they figured out where the hell these water shells were coming from and they finally cut what they did the first time they missed they went up the ditch there was a how the road has stone on the side where the waters pushes the sand away that couldn't have been more than three to five feet away from me where i was i was sitting on my left leg i was raised up and that's how it got up underneath i was sitting on my leg actually on my left leg and this leg was out like this for balance i guess that that's how that damn uh thing could it's the only way that could have happened because they missed me going up they must have come back down again and i was i said to frank cedaman i said because he turned white i thought he had been hit he turned ashen you know and he's looking over my shoulder he sees the tank but i don't know it's there and he cut me cut it loose and i i said yeah oh you hurt frank when the thing went up i said oh you hurt frank and where are you hurt that's what i asked him where he heard and he says he points he didn't say word and so i i turned to see what the hell was wrong and i see the tank well just just after i did that he must have come back down again and that's when i got it and uh they got on either side of me wherever frank was on this elbow and uh sofinski on this one they lifted me up otherwise i would have been sitting there i'd still be sitting there [Music] you

Channel: American Veterans Center

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Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, veteran, veterans, history, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, military, navy seal, d-day, invasion of normandy, world war ii, wwii, band of brothers real

Id: vspvRZjx-V0

Length: 39min 23sec (2363 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021