Manny Glickman
is marching on at 91

By Larry McMullen
For the Times

Emanuel "Manny" Glickman, who is 91 years old, survived the carnage of World War II in Europe that saw more than 135,000 American troops killed.
He came out alive and whole from the bloodiest engagement of that theater, the Battle of the Bulge that ended in victory but cost 19,000 American lives.
As a radio operator, Manny, who’s still active and interesting and living in Bustleton, had to set up hundreds of yards from his outfit when he was transmitting so that its location couldn’t be pinpointed. That made for times during the Battle of the Bulge when he was alone and exposed as the Germans mounted a counter-offensive through the Ardennes Forest in late 1944 that saw several hundred-thousand of their troops break through the American lines. The total of American injured and dead in the brutal fighting was 81,000.
Manny probably wasn’t counted in that number even though he hurt his leg when the truck he was traveling in collided with another vehicle during a blackout. That was the extent of his war injuries. He never got treatment for his leg until he returned to the United States.
Manny Glickman is no military strategist but he knows why he and his comrades in the 190th Field Artillery weren’t killed during the Germans’ drive through the frozen winter of the Ardennes.
"They missed us," he said.
Just like a batter whiffing on a pitch in baseball.
Manny began the war in Pennsylvania’s 28th Division but he volunteered and saw action with the 190th, pretty much like a friend of his from the 28th Division, Charley Friedman, who volunteered to transfer to the Air Corps and served as a bombardier on high-risk raids against enemy targets.
Toward the end of the war, with the outcome assured, a combat soldier qualified to be sent home when he accumulated 70 points, partly for time spent in battle. Manny wound up with 120 points.
"I volunteered for everything," he said. "It was my duty."
Charley Friedman volunteered to fly one more raid over the Ploesti oil fields in Romania after he already had flown enough missions to be relieved of combat. It was low-level flying at its most dangerous.
Charley Friedman was killed.
Manny Glickman, of course, wasn’t.
His outfit won five battle stars for Normandy, Central Europe, the Rhineland, the Ruhr and the Battle of the Bulge. Omaha Beach at Normandy was a baptism of fire. Manny saw his first dead bodies ever. He helped carry a mortally wounded soldier to cover who had carved his girlfriend’s name in the butt of the rifle he carried with him.
"I cried," said Manny.
Sixty-three years after shedding those tears, he still grieves for friends he lost in the war and those who have died in the years since.
He marches on. He’s still lucky.
He and his wife Lillian, who have been married going on 56 years, have a daughter, Susan Tucker, and two grandchildren, Jamie, 23, and Michael, 20.
Manny is long retired from his civilian occupation as a dress-cutter.
He is a living, breathing member of the Greatest Generation. His mind is clear, his speech is sharp and pointed. His memories are vivid.
There was a girl named Maureen McBride he knew in Belfast, Ireland, where his outfit trained before shipping out to France. She is pretty and dark-haired and young forever in the black-and-white photo he still keeps.
He learned after the war that she married a Canadian soldier and had four children.
That was then. This is now. He weighs 138 pounds, six more than when he was discharged from the Army. Maybe all of his good life shouldn’t be credited to luck.
He and Lillian live on Beyer Avenue in the Far Northeast and he works out four to five times a week at the Klein Branch of the Jewish Community Centers.
"Treadmill, bike, weights," Manny says casually for someone who is into his 10th decade of living.
He was a boxer when he was young and developed a habit of physical fitness. He fought a couple of bouts in the Army.
He wasn’t afraid of fighting up close and personal. In Czechoslovakia, villagers told him of a German soldier hiding in the woods. Manny went in and brought him out at the point of a carbine. The German was terrified. It might have been because GIs in Europe were all aware of the Germans’ reputation for not taking prisoners alive.
Manny eventually turned his captive over to members of an armored division.
"Why didn’t you kill him?" they said.
The war was destined to end very soon and very badly for the German.
Manny Glickman remains lucky to this day. ••