Malark

"Sometimes in the night, when the quiet wasn't feared as much, I'd think of home." Donald G. Malarkey at Bastogne, January 1945. Easy Company Soldier, Sgt. Don Malarkey with Bob Welch (2008).

Mourning the passing of Don Malarkey, soldier.

Consequential lives. That's what the soldiers of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne lived. What they did mattered.

He tried to enlist in the Marine Corps in the days following Pearl Harbor. He was rejected because of his teeth. Go figure. His next attempt was with the Army Air Corps - bad math. Drafted, he volunteered for the parachute infantry, having read that they were the best.

On June 5th, 1944 he climbed aboard a C-47 transport, carrying equipment that weighed almost as much as he did. The many perils of that night eluded him, and he joined on the ground a small band of night fighters. Toward morning they accompanied Lt. Richard Winters on an assault to neutralize artillery pieces raining death on the beaches at Normandy.

They numbered twelve. The Germans - five times more. In a brilliant piece of fire and maneuver still studied at The United States Military Academy at West Point, Lt. Winters led his team on a successful attack that silenced those guns. Malarkey won the Bronze Star for Valor. He was twenty-three years old.

Don Malarkey saw more action, and was on the line for more days, than any of the original troopers of Easy. He was still at the tip of the Allied spear when the 101st captured Berchtesgaden, Hitler's "Eagles Nest." They went to Austria to garrison, having been told that they were bound for the Pacific. Fortunately, the war ended prior to his redeployment.

I saw Don Malarkey at a presentation in 2011. He was touring the country, in the company of a friend, speaking about leadership. He talked of the other men, about their bravery, their sacrifice. He didn't say anything about himself.

I watched the Band of Brothers series, especially the interviews with the veterans. They all reminded me of my father. He had served in the Pacific, and fought in several of the most savage battles warfare has ever seen. He always said the same thing - "I was a part of something bigger than me. Those other kids, the ones who died or were badly shot up... Those were the heroes."

Don Malarkey wrote that this entered his mind, from Invictus, as he leapt into the night over France:

Out of the night that covers me
black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

Thank you for your service, Sgt. Your soul, and the souls of millions like you, liberated a world.