Free Easy Company Soldier by Don Malarkey

me. It wouldn’t be the last time.
    In late August, the 506th boarded a train from North Carolina to New York, and on September 5, we set sail aboard the British ship
Samaria.
Five thousand men crammed onto an older passenger ship designed for less than half that. I stood on the upper deck as we churned out of New York Harbor and watched as we passed the Statue of Liberty. It was enough to put a lump in a guy’s throat, wondering if you’d ever be back to see this country of yours again.
    Back home, the hundreds of mothers with boys in Easy Company had been sent letters from Sobel that, for the first time, suggested the guy might actually have a heart.
    Dear Madam,
    Soon your son [each individual name had been typed in] will drop from the sky to engage and defeat the enemy. He will have the best of weapons, and equipment, and have had months of hard, and strenuous training to prepare him for success on the battlefield.
    Your frequent letters of love, and encouragement, will arm him with a fighting heart. With that, he cannot fail, but will win glory for himself, make you proud of him, and his country ever grateful for his service in its hour of need.
    He signed each letter, naturally not telling our families where we were headed. En route to England, all unit insignia was ordered removed from clothing to keep confidentialthat we were paratroopers; the less the Germans knew of our whereabouts before the invasion, someone figured, the better. However, before docking, the order was reversed and we sewed the patches back on, apparently to increase the morale of the British. Europe, we were reminded, had already been at war for four years, and even something small, like a patch of a screaming eagle, could let the British know they were no longer fighting this war alone.
    Along with tens of thousands of other soldiers from the United States and elsewhere who were arriving here in England, we were to help end it.

6
PRELUDE TO THE GREAT CRUSADE
    England
September 1943 to June 1944
    While in England, the 2nd Battalion, of which Easy Company was part, made a demonstration jump before Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, and other high mucketymucks. We assembled after the jump in front of the reviewing stand at Greenham Common Airbase, where General Maxwell Taylor invited dignitaries to inspect the ranks, and where, the day before D-day, “Ike” would make a more famous visit to the 502nd Regiment. For some reason, I was in the front rank rather than in the mortar squad’s normal position toward the rear.
    Ike and Churchill were going down the line, stopping and talking to about one person in each frontal squad. I have no idea how they chose each person, whether by count, by random, or by how impressively a soldier came to attention asthe two dignitaries passed by. But before I knew it, the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, the man responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of France and Germany, was suddenly saluting me, Don Malarkey, an ROTC dropout.
    â€œWhere you from, soldier?” Eisenhower said.
    â€œAstoria, Oregon,
sir.
”
    For some reason, I wasn’t as flustered by all this as you might imagine.
    â€œAnd what were you doing before the war?”
    â€œGoing to school at the University of Oregon, sir.”
    â€œSo, who won that Oregon-Oregon State football game last year?”
    I told him I wasn’t sure, though the truth is nobody won because all the players were off playing soldier.
    â€œAnd what are your plans after the war, soldier?”
    â€œUh, return to school, sir.”
    â€œWell, good luck to you, young man,” Ike said, shaking my hand.
    He then asked if Churchill had any questions for me.
    â€œYes, how do you like England?” he asked. Photographers were snapping pictures. This, I quickly reminded myself, was the prime minister of Great Britain.
    â€œVery much, sir. I enjoy the literature and the history in