As a prisoner of war held by the Japanese, Malcolm suffered as much as any serviceman in the war. Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Malcolm enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1935. Then, in 1940, he re-enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Malcolm participated in the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941, and then sailed to the Philippine Islands that same fall, arriving on Thanksgiving Day of 1941. To counter the Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands in the spring of 1942, his unit, the Twenty-Seventh Bomb Group, was re-named the Twenty-Seventh Bomb Group Light Provisional Infantry, and pressed into the defense of Bataan. After American forces were surrendered, he survived the Bataan Death March, as well as prison camps in Japan and in Manchuria, where Russian troops liberated him. Malcolm spent a twenty-seven-year career in the Air Force, retiring with the rank of senior master sergeant.