Burton P. Christenson, fellow soldier, wrote:

  I watched a man during the peak of one of our most epic struggles with the Germans. We had fought for twelve hours. The enemy fire was showing on our nerves. The men were done in. The look of death showed in the faces of the living. The men of the first platoon were trying to blend into anything that made them inconspicuous. Tension mounted. Then far up ahead at the closest point to the enemy, standing erect, stood Dave Webster, shouting to the Germans to surrender. And as they sheepishly passed this hunk of a man, going to the end of their war, the first platoon again moved forward.  

 

A Brief Biography of David Kenyon Webster, Author of Parachute Infantry

  • Born June 2, 1922 in New York, New York
  • 1937-1940, Attended the Taft School, Watertown, Connecticut
  • 1940-1942, Attended Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • 1942-1945, Rifleman, 101st Airborne Division
  • 1945-1961, Journalist (reporter with Wall Street Journal, L.A. Daily News), writer, public relations (North American Aviation, Systems Development Corporation, Pacific Ocean Park), sales
  • Interests: Writing, surfing, skin diving, sailing, social justice
  • September 9, 1961, lost at sea while shark fishing off the coast of Santa Monica, California, leaving a wife and three children
   

Also author of:

Myth and Maneater, the Story of the Shark, a non-fiction book about sharks published in 1962 by W.W. Norton and Peter Davies, and reprinted in paperback in 1975 by Dell Publishing. According to shark biologist Rick Martin, this is one of his "10 favorite shark books of all time."

"The Night Before D-Day," an article about wartime experiences, published by Saga Magazine, October 1959

"They Ride the Wild Waves," an article about surfing, published in the Saturday Evening Post, June 14, 1958

"We Drank Hitler's Champagne," an article about wartime experiences, published by the Saturday Evening Post, May 3, 1952

Other unpublished fiction and non-fiction work


   

Barbara Webster, in her foreword to Myth and Maneater, wrote:

At 10 a.m. on September 9th, 1961 Dave sailed away from the Santa Monica pier in the Tusitala. He had squid bait, a heavy line and hook. He was going shark fishing. That evening I drove to the pier, planning to help him beach the boat. He had not come in. I spoke to the harbour-master, who suggested that he might be waiting for a wind to bring him in. But he did not come home that night. The Coast Guard began a search the next morning with boats and planes. Finally a fishing boat found the Tusitala awash five miles offshore. One oar and the tiller were missing, and so was Dave.

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