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David Kenyon Webster was a member of E Company, 506th Regiment of the
U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division during World War II. He was an aspiring
writer who left Harvard to enlist in the paratroops. Webster wrote numerous
letters to his family and, after the war ended, wrote a book about his
experiences, Parachute
Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the
Third Reich. Webster's letters home and manuscript were used
as source material by Stephen Ambrose for his book Band of Brothers,
and as background for the writers of HBO's 2001
ten-part miniseries, "Band of Brothers."
In October 2002, Random House published a revised and expanded version
of David Kenyon Webster's Parachute
Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the
Third Reich. This new edition includes over 100 pages of previously
unpublished material, including 20 letters home, and restores some of
the grittier language and actual names that were used in Webster's manuscript.
It includes an introduction by the late Stephen Ambrose.
A previous edition of Parachute Infantry was published posthumously
by Louisiana State University Press in 1994. The Washington Post
noted then, "Ambrose was right to urge publication of this almost-forgotten
memoir. It is beautifully written and perfectly evokes life and battle
in a parachute infantry company."
HBO's "Band of Brothers," based on the book by Stephen Ambrose,
follows the paratroopers of E Company from training in Georgia through
the end of World War II. E Company jumped into Normandy on the night before
D-Day and into Holland in Operation Market-Garden, fought in the Battle
of the Bulge, and captured Hitler's Eagle's Nest at the end of the war.
According to Ambrose, "At the peak of its effectiveness, in Holland
in October 1944 and in the Ardennes in January 1945, Easy Company was
as good a rifle company as there was in the world."
David Kenyon Webster is portrayed by American actor Eion Bailey in Episodes
4, 5, 8, 9 and 10 of HBO's "Band of Brothers." Webster is featured
in Episode 8, "The Patrol," which he also narrates.
This web site, produced by his family, honors David Kenyon Webster and
his comrades-in-arms. Click on the above headings to learn more about
Webster's life, his books, and his experiences as a paratrooper during
World War II.
Comments or questions on this web site?
E-mail here.
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