On This Day 101 years ago: PVT Edward Rodney Manleys birthday

One of the replacements of Fox Company, 502nd PIR, reached the incredible age of 100 on November 5, 2021. Exactly 101 years ago, to this day, is the day this 101st Screaming Eagle was born. Ed Manley passed away a little over three months after becoming a centennial. 

Featued image: PVT Ed Manley, a courageous F/502, 101st Screaming Eagle (Courtesy of Darla Brigham Brewer). 

His youth 

Born in Chicago in 1921, Edward Manley grew up in an orphanage in Harlem after he became 5. Growing up in New York, he learned life the hard way. When he was 11 years old, his mother remarried and was able to provide him with a stable home in Bayside, Long Island.  

Ed Manley’s combat jumps 

PVT Ed Manley made his first combat jump on D-Day and his second one on September 17, 1944, at the start from the Market Garden operation with the 502nd PIR, but not as a paratrooper of Fox Company. PVT Manley joined Fox Company together with PVT Joe Kettering when they were assigned from the regimental band to F/502 on October 26, 1944. It was the same day when Fox Company lost PFC Dan McBride temporarily due to his leg wounds. These two new men were added to the company in quite an unusual way.  

An unusual story 

During WWII, some of the paratroopers occasionally tried to escape the horrors of war and enjoy their time abroad as they needed to let off steam and relieve the pressures of combat. PVT Ed Manley, who had jumped with the regimental headquarters into Normandy, tried to do so with some of his friends while in the Netherlands. 

Ed Manley managed to confiscate a German truck and went off for Brussels, Belgium, with a couple of other paratroopers. This is what SGT Howard Matthews of Fox Company remembered of their actions, and how the 502nd leadership chose an appropriate “punishment” for the four troopers.  

“We had a stolen truck incident in Fox Company. PVT Ed Manley was a member of the 502nd band (Ed Manley was a trumpet player). He was at regimental headquarters with time on his hand, together with PVT Joe Kettering, Brown and Francis Gallagher. They stole a captured German army truck and headed for Brussels, and had a good time. They came back to regimental headquarters when Fox Company was about to attack a small town, two miles down this road. Two scouts were out a half-mile. The point of six men, three men on each side of the road, was about 100 yards from the side of the road and one-quarter mile out, when this jeep drives up. A captain said, ‘Take this man and put him in front of you.’ Ed Manley got out of the jeep…no rifle and no sidearms, only his trumpet. The captain said, ‘He’s to blow the horn.’ Ed Manley started out with Joe Kettering beside him playing ‘As The Saints Go Marching In.’ The company followed along. There were no enemy soldiers in the little town.” 

This is how Ed Manley and Joe Kettering ended up in Fox Company.  

His post war life 

Ed Manley became a prisoner of war at the Battle of the Bulge. After he returned home from the war, Manley held several jobs. He worked for the state police in New York, was a runner for a concrete company, worked on a tanker on the Great Lakes, was a lumber salesman, and a theater manager. He got married and had three kids with his wife Dorothy Ann. After she passed away in the mid-eighties, Ed ended up in Florida where he lived until he passed away on February 27, 2022. Ed Manley was one of the happy few WWII 101st Screaming Eagles reaching the age of 100 years.