Donald George Malarkey (July 31, 1921[1] – September 30, 2017)[2] 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.

[3]: 70  He was a volunteer firefighter during the destructive Tillamook Burn forest fire, which destroyed thousands of acres of Oregon timber.

Later that day, in a pitched battle, he helped knock out four German 105 mm artillery battery, an action now called the Brécourt Manor Assault, for which he received the Bronze Star for his heroism.

He fought for twenty-three days in Normandy, nearly eighty in the Netherlands, thirty-nine in the Battle of Bastogne in Belgium, and nearly thirty more in and around Haguenau, France, and the Ruhr Pocket in Germany.

In 1989, Malarkey traveled with Ambrose and other members of Easy Company, including Richard Winters and Carwood Lipton, to various sites where they had fought in Europe.

[3]: 252  The oral history and first-person recollections that Malarkey and the others provided became the basis for Ambrose's book Band of Brothers, which was published in 1992.

During Ambrose's collection of anecdotal information for the book, Malarkey told of the saga of the Niland brothers of Tonawanda, New York, how two had died on D-Day and another was presumed killed.

[3]: 110 Malarkey lived in Salem, Oregon, and formerly spoke extensively to high school and college students and other groups on his Easy Company experiences.

He traveled with the USO to Army posts and hospitals in the United States and Europe, where he met with soldiers wounded in the Iraq War.