A U.S. Army veteran who has masqueraded as a D-Day paratrooper for the elite 82nd Airborne Division for decades is due to receive France’s highest military award despite discrepancies in his service accounts.
Howard Manoian told of landing behind enemy lines on D-Day as a paratrooper, but National Archives records prove he served as a member of a less glamorous chemical warfare unit that came ashore on Utah Beach and ran a supply dump.
“To give the award to someone who has misrepresented his service for the past 30 years diminishes the value of the award,” Brian Siddall, nephew of the 82nd’s Cpl. Quent Siddall, who was killed on D-Day, told the Boston Herald.
The French government still plans to award the Legion of Honor to Manoian, despite being aware of the discrepancies.
"Mr. Manoian will receive the Legion of Honor based on the confirmed and established elements of his service, not on the contested ones. It is established that Mr. Manoian participated in the Normandy campaign and was wounded in action on French soil,” Alexis Berthier of the French Consulate told the Boston Herald.
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