Evonne and I are going to see Donald Malarkey, one of the original Easy Company soldiers, who was the Private/Sergeant from Oregon that the character of the same name was based on.
He is doing a lecture tonight at the university that seemed much too interesting to miss. I think he is 84 years old now but still going strong.
Blimey, that sounds like an interesting excursion. Let us know how it was, I'd like to hear.
It was entralling - lots of stuff that you could relate to Ambrose's book and the mini-series but it filled out the characters more.
The auditorium was absolutely packed and we got directed up to the balcony (nose-bleed seats) but Evonne talked a young soldier doing usher duty into finding us a couple of seats downstairs, which he guarded until we got down there.
Sgt. Malarkey spoke for about an hour and a half and then did a question & answer session for about 30 minutes. He got several standing ovations (deserved I thought) and clearly enjoys himself when relating these stories. It reminded me of a grandad telling war stories, but with more clarity and you simply could not doubt these at all.
At the end, there was a huge line of people getting stuff autographed but Evonne found another soldier who managed to get her into the front of the line and she got my "Band of Brothers" DVD case signed. The soldier turned out to be a good friend of Sgt. Malarkey and told her that when Steve Ambrose died, he had borrowed some personal items that belonged to Sgt. Malarkey and now Mrs. Ambrose has kept them and won't give them back which must be very distressing for the Malarkey family.
All in all, a fascinating experience. We got his address too so I'll write him a letter this week, as he said he much prefers snail-mail to e-mail and gets about 10 letters a week nowadays but it used to be over 70 a week when the series was on.
If you get the opportunity to see any of these guys, I'd say go for it. I know that "Shifty" Powers (the company sniper) is doing a similar talk tonight but that is over in Virginia.
Wow, I would love to go to one of those talks. How do you find out when and where? There can't be many of these guys still alive.