Manuel "Manny" Ventoza is a self-deprecating guy, a Shriner who likes cowboy boots and parks a camper in the driveway. He smiles often and effortlessly. Most of his Burien neighbors probably have no idea he's a war hero.

Memorial Day means something more to Manny Ventoza than a barbecue.

He was a U.S. Army paratrooper during World War II and was often in the first wave of assault, dropping behind enemy lines in France and Italy to deactivate land mines, German tanks and other enemy equipment. He also set booby traps.

Ventoza was awarded the Silver Star, one of the Army's most prestigious combat medals, for gallantry in action with an opposing foreign force.

A display cabinet in the Ventoza home is lined with flat cases bearing medals from France as well as the United States. Brightly colored service ribbons representing participation in specific battles and theaters of war attract the eye like the controlled riot of hues on an artist's easel. One ribbon is distinct in its simplicity, a plain patch of blue, a presidential unit citation for meritorious service awarded to his military outfit.

Ventoza usually spends the last Monday in May honoring all those who've died in service to the United States, including his own fallen comrades. This year he will be "parading and saluting" at Bonney-Watson Memorial Cemetery in SeaTac.

Ventoza joined the Army at age 18 fresh out of Highline High School.

"Every manchild in Burien joined up," Ventoza said. "All of us went in the war."

Ventoza wanted to join the cavalry because he always loved horses and had begun studying veterinary science. Then a friend told him paratroopers got paid $50 more per month than cavalry soldiers.

He went to jump school in Georgia. Of 36 soldiers from Fort Lewis who went through paratrooper training together, only 16 made it home from the war.

Paratroopers wore pants with pockets up and down the legs to store grenades, food, whatever's needed. Berlin Sally, the German radio equivalent of Tokyo Rose, used to call American paratroopers "baggy pants," Ventoza said.

Ventoza was assigned to the 17th Airborne Division but so many paratroopers were killed in action, there weren't enough left to form a division anymore so the Army merged the remaining members of the 17th Airborne into the 82nd Airborne Division.

Besides parachuting, Ventoza learned to deactivate different kinds of land mines made in Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Czechoslovakia. Some mines went off by a trip wire. Others relied on a pressure-release mechanism. Some mines were intended to injure soldiers on foot while others were designed to pierce a tank.

Besides being a paratrooper and demolitions man, Ventoza also was a machine gunner. Once after parachuting into France, his unit got into a ground fight with German soldiers near the coast.

Ventoza ran out of machine-gun ammunition so he grabbed his M-1 rifle and continued fighting. But he was sprayed with shrapnel from an incoming mortar. He and about 30 other American soldiers were captured by the Germans.

Previously during the war, Ventoza had apprehended and held German prisoners himself. He said he always made it a point to treat them humanely.

This time Ventoza was the prisoner. He and other American soldiers were locked up by German soldiers in a town in France near the coast.

At one point U.S. Navy ships zeroed in on the location.

"Those ships were lobbing shells in and the Germans had to go," Ventoza said.

The Allied prisoners were taken to a blown-out building, where Ventoza remembers seeing a German soldier with ammo belts across his chest. The German soldiers didn't want their retreat slowed down by a platoon of prisoners so they lined up the Allied prisoners to shoot them.

A German officer stepped forward to ask that Ventoza be spared. The officer had been a prisoner under Ventoza's supervision previously and, to show his appreciation for merciful treatment, he interceded to save Ventoza's life.

Ventoza still has the Iron Cross that German officer gave him.

Although badly wounded, Ventoza and a couple of British soldiers were released. They made their way to the coast and soon they were aboard a hospital ship. Ventoza recuperated at a hospital in Naples.

When he was well the Army decided to send Ventoza home, but he wouldn't go. He insisted on rejoining his outfit which by then was headed for the fighting in Italy. When Ventoza arrived, half of the soldiers he'd started with were gone.

Since they'd been in southern Europe, Ventoza and the other soldiers had only summer uniforms when they began the long march northward toward Belgium, the winter and the Battle of the Bulge.

"We cut up German blankets to wrap around our feet," Ventoza said.

These days cold weather is no concern for the paratroopers of the 17th and 82nd Airborne Divisions. They get together a few times a year now at places like Palm Springs and remember their warrior days, pay homage to the dead and ponder what life might've been like had all their buddies made it home with them.

"The war changed us," Ventoza said. "It gives you a hard crust inside."

He parachuted into a lot of tough situations during World War II but Ventoza never jumped out of an airplane after the war.

"I don't do it for fun," he said.

Tim St. Clair can be reached at 932-0300 or tstclair@robinsonnews.com