Wounded senior airman to wed widow of comrade

Wounded senior airman to wed widow of comrade

By Charles D. Brunt - Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal via AP
Posted : Friday Jun 11, 2010 15:16:36 EDT

BOSQUE FARMS, N.M. — It is an unusual love story, forged just over four months ago in a horrific attack on a platoon of 13 U.S. troops crossing a small bridge outside the southern Afghanistan village of Ashoque.

In a matter of minutes, three soldiers and an airman, none of whom had reached his 25th birthday, were killed by two roadside bombs — one set off by the weight of a soldier stepping on a buried pressure plate, the other triggered by a hidden Taliban fighter as the rest of the platoon scrambled back across the bridge with their dead and wounded.

Among the six wounded was Air Force Senior Airman Michael Malarsie, a 22-year-old Bosque Farms man who had been in Afghanistan just four weeks when the improvised bombs went off.

Malarsie, blasted by shrapnel and gravel from the neck up by the first IED, lost his left eye immediately. Despite the best efforts of a phalanx of doctors, he never regained sight in his right eye.
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Wounded senior airman to wed widow of comrade