Donald Malarkey

Technical Sergeant Donald George Malarkey (July 31, 1921 – September 30, 2017) was a non-commissioned officer with Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, in the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army during World War II. Malarkey was portrayed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers by Scott Grimes. 2Youth Donald Malarkey was born in Astoria, Oregon, on July 31, 1921, to Leo and Helen (née Trask) Malarkey, married in 1918. He graduated from Astoria High School in 1939. As a youth, he worked on a purse seiner crew on the Columbia River. He was a volunteer firefighter during the destructive Tillamook Burn forest fire, which destroyed thousands of acres of Oregon timber. He was in his first semester at the University of Oregon in the fall of 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. 2Military service After Pearl Harbor, Malarkey tried enlisting in the Marines, but was rejected because of dental problems. He then tried the Army Air Corps, but lacked the requisite mathematics background. As such, when he was drafted in July 1942, he volunteered for the paratroops of the United States Army, after reading a Life magazine article about them being the best. He trained at Camp Toccoa, Georgi