Several days after arrival at Mourmelon, the men got paid in the mess hall at the conclusion of dinner. Sergeant Malarkey drew his pay and had started out the door when he noticed a crap game in progress. A hot shooter had piled up a big bankroll. Malarkey thought he could not possibly continue to throw passes so he started fading the shooter. In a few minutes he had blown three months’ pay. He left the mess hall thinking how dumb he was – not to have gambled, but to have lost everything without once shooting the dice himself.
Back in barracks he ran into Skip Muck. There was a dice game going on. Malarkey asked Muck if he intended to get in it; but no, Muck replied, he was tired of being broke all the time. Besides he only had $60 left after paying off his previous gambling debts. Malarkey thereupon talked him into a $60 loan and got into the game. In fifteen minutes he had built himself a bankroll of French francs, British pounds, U.S. dollars, Belgian francs, and Dutch guilders. (The arguments about the exchange rate around those crap games were intense; somehow these guys, most of whom had hated – and mostly flunked – math in high school, figured it out.)
Malarkey took his money over to the N.C.O. club and got into a game with some twenty players. He threw $60 of U.S. money into the game – the amount he had borrowed from Muck. He won. He let it ride and won again. And again. And again. On the last throw he had $3,000 riding. He won.
He was afraid to leave the game with more than $6,000, which was damn near the whole company payroll. He put the large francs in his pockets and stayed in the game until he had lost all the American, British, Dutch, and Belgian money. Returning to barracks, he gave Muck the $60 plus a $500 tip. He still had $3,600.
Source:
Ambrose, Stephen Edward. “Resting, Recovering, and Refitting.” Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2004. 166-67. Print.
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