Phony paratrooper at D-Day ceremony

Howard Manoian seems to be a popular guy with the media since he’s a veteran of the D-Day invasion. You can find his accounts across a large range of media sources. Stars and Stripes interviewed him in 2006;

So you’re one of the fellows who jumped out of an airplane and into this place?

Oh yeah, by error. My company was Company A (1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Regiment, 82nd Airborne). Objective La Priere, take the bridge and hold it. By error I landed here in Sainte-Mère-Église. I ended up in the cemetery in the back of the church. But my company was at the bridge. I arrived two days later. I was stuck here, and I attached myself to Company G to help protect Sainte-Mère-Église from the Germans. Once it was cleaned out, they were trying to get back in.

CNN interviewed him in 2004:

MANOIAN: All I know is they’re shooting at us, I shoot back. That’s it. No feelings, you know?

BITTERMAN (on camera): Nothing personal?

MANOIAN: Nothing personal.

BITTERMAN (voice-over): Today the old soldiers who were on different sides of a world war pose and sign autographs in front of the Stop Bar (ph), answering the questions.

But the one Howard says he’ll never answer is how many Germans did you kill?

The San Francisco Chronicle also interviewed him in 2004;

Paratrooper Howard Manoian landed in the town graveyard, nearly two miles from La Fiere bridge, which he had been ordered to seize.

“I banged on doors — I had a French phrase book,” recalled the Massachusetts native and decorated war veteran from his home in Chef-du-Pont, two miles from St. Mere-Eglise. “I said, ‘Me, La Fiere.’ They said, ‘No. St. Mere-Eglise.’ ”

It took Manoian two days, ducking gunfire from reassembled German forces, to get to the bridge. His platoon kept moving, later crossing the Ardennes into Belgium and then into Germany. In April 1945, Manoian was sent home. A few weeks later, the war was over.

Here he is doing an interview in a British documentary;

And a video of him sticking up some German re-enactors.

In fact, he’s been doing interviews as recently as last week, with the tales of his daring-do.

Manoian was interviewed by the Boston Herald in 2001, but now, the Herald is blowing the whistle on the 94-year-old;

National Archives records provided to the Herald by military researchers show Manoian does in fact deserve recognition as one of the many thousands of young American soldiers who put their lives on the line on D-Day – not as a paratrooper, but as a member of a less glamorous chemical warfare unit that came ashore on Utah Beach and ran a supply dump.

“The military records leave no doubt that he never served in Normandy as a paratrooper,” said researcher Brian Siddall of Ithaca, N.Y., citing numerous reports and payroll records listing Manoian in the 33rd Chemical Decontamination Company throughout 1944.

So, yeah, Manoian was at Normandy, but his accounts of parachuting in with the 505th, killing Germans and being saved by the French are a stretch. He was busted as a fraud by his own 82d brotherhood;

D-Day paratrooper David Bullington, 88, of Dyesburg, Tenn., whose name appears in the 82nd’s official records, said he only met Manoian years after the war and Manoian told him three different versions of where he landed.

“You don’t land in three different places in one jump and walk away,” Bullington said. Noting that he lost a lot of friends that day, Bullington added, “I don’t like to see someone claiming to be a paratrooper to grab a little bit of glory for doing what real paratroopers did in Ste. Mere-Eglise. It’s a slap in the face.”

In numerous interviews – even when challenged by the Herald this week – Manoian has said he was shot and hit in both legs by shrapnel June 17, 1944, while searching a house. But records show he was evacuated to England that day after fracturing his middle finger, returning to duty only in November 1944 – precluding his claim of a combat jump in Holland on Sept. 17, 1944.

That’s some fractured finger to keep him out of the war for five months.

I don’t understand why folks who had honorable service feel they have to embellish their records. If I had met Howard and he’d told me landed on Normandy and worked in a supply depot, I’d have still shook his hand and thanked him. This, though is unforgivable.

Jules Crittenden writes that Manoian gave a Gallic Shrug to the discovery of his charade.

Thanks to 1stCavRVN11B for the tip.

Category: Phony soldiers