1st Lt. Dan Malcom, U.S.M.C. (KIA)

Brinson Marine Killed in Iraq

First Lt. Dan Thomas Malcom, 25, a resident of Brinson, was killed by a gun shot wound Wednesday during the U.S. Marines’ hunt for insurgents around the area of Fallujah in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq.

He was assigned as a platoon leader in the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force when he died.

Malcom was fulfilling a lifelong desire to fill the shoes of a man he never knew—his father. Dan Malcom Sr. was also a U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam, said his cousin, Patrick Cofty, of Brinson.

“He was a real stand-up guy,” Cofty said Friday of his cousin who was killed Wednesday. “He wanted to follow in his daddy’s foot steps even though he never knew him.”

Malcom and his sister, Dana Killebrew of Donalsonville, were both named for their dad, who died before his son was born, Cofty said. Their mother, Cherry Malcom, is a resident of Colquitt.

Cofty said Malcom lived about five miles north of Brinson on Highway 310. The family moved to Decatur County from Thomson, Ga., in 1993.

A representative of the U.S. Marine Corps in Tallahassee, Gunnery Sgt. Robert Hall, said Malcom’s body has returned to the United States and his burial will be in Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 23.

Malcom was serving his second tour in Iraq, having started his second tour this summer.

Lt. Malcom graduated from The Citadel in 2001 and went into the Marine Corps immediately. Prior to attending The Citadel, he was an honor and Star student at the Miller County High School, where he graduated in 1997. Malcom played basketball, baseball, was in the band and was in the Beta Club all four years, in the Spanish Club, Chess Club, was vice president of his junior class and president of his senior class, the Miller County Liberal reports.

Kevin Bates, a classmate who was quoted in The Citadel’s Web site, www.citadel.edu, where a memorial page has been set up, said Malcom threw himself into his military duties while there.

“Other than that he was focused mainly on his studies and friends. He was always the calm headed one of us,” Bates said. “He kinda pulled everyone together. He was always true to his beliefs and he appreciated the little things in life more than most of us do.”

He was a member of the Mother’s Home Free Will Baptist Church in Miller County.