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(More customer reviews)Don Malarkey offers yet another heart-felt memoir from those brave Band of Brothers, Easy Company, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment. Malarkey writes deep from the heart on every page of this gripping account of his life. From humble beginnings growing up in Astoria, Washington to attending the University of Oregon, Malarkey beautifully describes the people, places, and occurrences that had the most influence on his life. Like the memoirs of Winters, Guarnere and Heffron, the bulk of the book's pages are devoted the exploits of Easy Company. Malarkey does not stray far from the chronological events of Stephen Ambrose's book and HBO mini-series; however, he delves deeper into his own emotions and philosophical questions than his predecessors. Rather than explaining events, Malarkey paints a human face on the people who participated in them. As Malarkey clearly explains in the book's final pages, the attention brought upon him and his Easy Company comrades by both the book and film coupled with a string of Easy Company reunions, has been tremendously therapeutic in overcoming over four decades of suppressed post traumatic stress and survivor's guilt. This memoir tells more than just the story of Don Malarkey's life; writing it undoubtedly helped Don Malarkey understand the meaning of his own life, an undertaking better than any high-priced therapist could offer.
Most of us probably know Don Malarkey by the character portrayed by actor Scott Grimes in the popular HBO mini-series. Images of the carefree mischievous red-haired Irish kid from Washington State, who foolishly risked his own life to retrieve a German Lugar, and efforts to keep a stolen motorcycle with side-car hidden from the much hated Captain Sobel, immediately come to mind. These events were true. Yet Malarkey takes his readers into the turbulent emotions of a young man who, on the surface enjoyed English literature, recited poetry from memory, yet inwardly was forever changed by his experiences in combat. The film only scratched the surface of Don Malarkey; the book takes us to the inner depths.
The awkward scene where Grimes goes to pick up his uniforms from the British laundress, and silently pays for all the bundles belonging to his dead comrades killed in Normandy, is what this book is all about. Malarkey took the deaths of all his fellow Easy Company men hard, but none harder that the death of his closest friend, Warren "Skip" Muck. After Skip's death, Malarkey exchanged letters with Skip's fiance promising to visit her after the war, but couldn't bring himself to keep that promise. When she showed up at an Easy Company reunion in the mid-1990s, Malarkey embraced her and allowed fifty years worth of tears to flow.
The film showed Malarkey fidgeting with his coveted Lugar in the frozen woods outside Bastogne, but could not adequately convey that Malarkey was a hare's frozen breath from committing suicide. His undying belief that "a Malarkey never gives up" kept him from putting the pistol to his head and pulling the trigger. "Never give up," clearly provides the underlining message of the book. Another reason Malarkey did not take his own life that night at Bastogne was the memory of a promise he had made to his aging grandmother (who died in her sleep the night of June 6, 1944), that he would return home unharmed. Physically, Malarkey kept his promise to her, yet mentally and emotionally, he carried wounds that would plague him for decades.
Malarkey offers a most important fundamental message: no matter what trials and tribulations life throws at you, never give up! He also underscores the downside of World War II's silent "greatest generation:" keeping the memory of traumatic experiences bottled up inside of you will be your undoing. For those expecting just another Easy Company vet's perspective on events portrayed in the book and movie, this memoir will not disappoint. But Malarkey's underlying message on coping with the memories of war and getting on with your life is the true gift in this beautifully written autobiography. This should be required reading for any returning war veteran!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Easy Company Soldier: The Legendary Battles of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers"
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