David Kenyon Webster

Did You Know?

• Webster attended the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, where he wrestled, ran track, and was a member of the German club.
• He enrolled at Harvard University as an English major in 1940.

Military service

David Kenyon Webster walked away from Harvard in 1942 to sign up as a paratrooper with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which later became part of the 101st Airborne Division. He drilled with Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, at Camp Toccoa, Georgia. On D-Day, he jumped into Normandy with the 2nd Battalion's headquarters company, touching down in the soggy fields behind Utah Beach and taking a minor shrapnel hit from a German mortar. Bored with the limited action in headquarters, he moved to Easy Company once the Normandy fighting ended.

In September 1944, he parachuted into the Netherlands for Operation Market Garden. On October 5, during the fight in the Nijmegen salient, a machine gun bullet tore clean through his calf. He shouted "they got me!" and later cringed at the movie-like line. After recovering in the hospital, he returned to Easy Company in late January 1945 at Haguenau, France, where he found his unit shattered by the Battle of the Bulge and many friends gone. Later, in Germany, Easy Company helped free the Kaufering concentration camp.

Writing career

After the war, Webster attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont. He reported for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News, and handled public relations for North American Aviation and other firms. In 1948, parts of his unpublished war memoirs were included in Rendezvous with Destiny. The Saturday Evening Post ran his piece on the 506th PIR's time in Berchtesgaden in 1952. His work also appeared in Infantry Journal, Graphic Arts Monthly, and other magazines. He wrote Myth and Maneater, a shark book that came out after his death in 1962. At the time he died, he was a technical writer at System Development Corporation.

Personal life and death

In 1952, David Kenyon Webster wed Barbara Stoessel, a Scripps College alumna, and they had three children. On September 9, 1961, he sailed from Santa Monica, California, to fish but vanished. An Episcopal memorial service took place on October 7.

Posthumous recognition and legacy

Stephen Ambrose relied heavily on David Kenyon Webster's unpublished writings for his 1992 book Band of Brothers. Those memoirs were later released in 1994 as Parachute Infantry, covering Webster's experiences from D-Day through the fall of Nazi Germany. The New York Times praised the book as "gutsy, sometimes bemused and sometimes angry," while Booklist highlighted its "Sad Sack sarcasm." A Chicago Tribune review noted that Webster's account stood apart from other D-Day books for its "gritty honesty," including his admission that American soldiers shot unarmed German prisoners and his relief at receiving a non-disabling "million-dollar wound." In the 2001 HBO miniseries, actor Eion Bailey played Webster. After his death, the Taft School created the David Kenyon Webster Prize for Excellence in Writing, awarded annually to a student.