Mildred Jeanette Dalton Manning was born on July 11, 1914 in Winder, Georgia. She was the daughter of Jesse Bee Dalton and Flossie Dooley Barber. Mildred was raised in poverty on a north Georgia farm but was able to graduate from nursing school at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital and was working as an RN at Grady when she joined the US Army in 1939. Posted to the Philippines at the outbreak of World War II, she took part in the defense of Corregidor until captured by the Japanese in May of 1942. One of the nurses held in Manila's Santo Tomas prison camp for almost three years, she was starved and humiliated, suffering a number of health problems, but continued caring for the sick and injured until liberated on February 3, 1945. Upon release she was awarded the Bronze Star and the Presidential Unit Citation and sent on War Bond drives, on one of her trips meeting Atlanta journalist Arthur Manning (deceased 1994) whom she married in July 1945. Relocating to Jacksonville, Florida, she raised her children and worked as a nurse until a final move to New Jersey following her husband's death. Mrs. Manning died of pulmonary and age related illnesses; her story was fictionalized in two 1943 movies entitled "Cry Havoc" and "So Proudly We Hail" and was told in Elizabeth Norman's 1999 book "We Band of Angels".

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