Private First Class David Kenyon Webster was an American soldier, journalist and author.
During World War II he was a private with Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute
Infantry Regiment, in the 101st Airborne Division. Webster was portrayed in the HBO miniseries
Band of Brothers by Eion Bailey.
Youth Webster was born in New York and educated
at The Taft School, Watertown, Connecticut. He was of English and Scottish descent. In
1943, he volunteered for the paratroopers before having a chance to finish his studies
as an English literature major at Harvard University. He used his middle name "Kenyon"
while addressing his family in his letters to home rather than his given name, David.[1]
Military service Webster originally trained with Fox Company,
jumped on D-Day with Headquarters Company of the 2nd Battalion, then requested a transfer
to Easy Company and served in the Company until discharged in 1945.
From a wealthy and influential family, Webster could have arranged an officer's commission
stateside, but he wanted to be a "grunt" and thus be able to see and document the war from
a foxhole. By most accounts, he did not like what he saw and had great disdain for Germany's
audacity in creating the war. On D-Day, Webster landed nearly alone and
off-course in flooded fields behind Utah Beach, and was wounded a few days later. He also
jumped into the Netherlands in Operation Market Garden. Later in this campaign, he was wounded
in the leg by machine gun fire during an attack in the no-man's land called "the Island",
near Arnhem, where the company was relocated after Operation Market Garden ended. Webster
was fighting alongside Lt. Nicholas Fazio at the time, and witnessed Fazio's death shortly
before he himself was wounded. While recuperating back in England, Webster
missed the Battle of the Bulge fighting and rejoined his unit in February 1945 after being
formally released by the hospital. What he found was a decimated regiment, exhausted,
weary and bitter over the loss of friends. Soon thereafter, Easy Company discovered their
first concentration camp, witnessing firsthand the walking and also the unburied dead of
the Memmingen Concentration Camp. Author Steven Ambrose had this to say about
Webster: "He had long ago made it a rule of his Army life never to do anything voluntarily.
He was an intellectual, as much an observer and chronicler of the phenomenon of soldiering
as a practitioner. He was almost the only original Toccoa man who never became an NCO.
Various officers wanted to make him a squad leader, but he refused. He was there to do
his duty, and he did it - he never let a buddy down in combat, in France, Holland, or Germany
- but he never volunteered for anything and he spurned promotion".
Awards and decorations His list of authorized medals and decorations
are: Bronze Star
Purple Heart with one oak leaf cluster Good Conduct Medal
European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with Arrowhead and 4 service stars
World War II Victory Medal Army of Occupation Medal
Presidential Unit Citation with one Oak Leaf Cluster
Combat Infantryman Badge Parachutist Badge with 2 jump stars
Later years He was the last of the surviving Toccoa veterans
who had fought in Normandy to be sent home. He returned to work as a reporter for the
Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News and found great enjoyment sailing, studying
oceanography and sea life. During those years he worked on his wartime memoirs and occasionally
approached magazines with an article but deferred any wholesale treatment of the war.
He had a wife, whom he married in 1951, and had three children. His interest in sharks
led him to write a book on the subject entitled Myth and Maneater: The Story of the Shark.
However, Webster's interest in aquatics eventually may have led to his demise, as he was lost
at sea off the coast of Santa Monica on September 9, 1961. As his body was never recovered,
it is generally assumed that Webster drowned. Webster's wartime diary and thoughts remained
unpublished except for a few short stories in magazines such as the Saturday Evening
Post. Unable to see a salient theme for his greater
wartime experience, publishers showed little interest in another memoir. However, Stephen
Ambrose, a tenured University of Louisiana System professor of history who had studied
Webster's writings, was so impressed by the historical value of Webster's unpublished
papers that the professor encouraged Webster's widow to submit the writing package to LSU
Press. This she did and, with Ambrose's foreword, a book was published by LSU in 1994.
Titled Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third
Reich, it presented Webster's first-hand account of life as an Airborne infantryman. His trained
eye, honesty and writing skills helped give the book as well as the miniseries a color
and tone not available in other G.I. diaries. References
Bibliography Ambrose, Stephen E.. Band of Brothers: Easy
Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. Simon & Schuster.
ISBN 978-0-7434-6411-6. Webster, David K.). Parachute Infantry: An
American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich. Bantam Dell.
ISBN 978-0-440-24090-7. Webster, David K.. Myth and Maneater:The Story
of the shark. Norton. ISBN 0-207-12265-2. External links
Official website "David Kenyon Webster". Find a Grave. Retrieved
2009-12-30.