Donald Malarkey, The Easy Company Member Who Helped Preserve The Unit’s Story
Public DomainDonald Malarkey called his fellow soldiers “the most talented and inspiring group of men that I have ever known.”
In 1987, World War II veteran Donald Malarkey met historian Stephen Ambrose. Before long, he and other former soldiers were telling the historian their true stories from the war, which, of course, made their way into Ambrose’s book and then in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.
So which parts of Malarkey’s story in Band of Brothers are true? The miniseries stays fairly close to the truth — with at least two exceptions.
Born on July 31, 1921, in Astoria, Oregon, Malarkey was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 while he was at the University of Oregon. He volunteered to be a paratrooper and then became a member of Easy Company.
HBODonald Malarkey was portrayed by Scott Grimes in Band of Brothers.
Right off the bat, Malarkey is a central character in one of the most surprising moments from the miniseries. In Episode 2, “Day of Days,” Malarkey meets a group of German POWs and jokingly asks one where he’s from. It turns out that the soldier is from Eugene, Oregon. In this case, the truth is even more incredible than the show portrays. Not only was the German from Oregon in real life, but he and Malarkey had actually worked right across the street from each other for years.
There is one other moment in Band of Brothers that doesn’t accurately reflect Malarkey’s service. In the show, Malarkey, played by Scott Grimes, is present when the unit stumbles upon Dachau. In real life, Malarkey was sick that day and he was not able to enter the concentration camp.
Overall, however, the inconsistencies between fact and fiction are mild.
