David Kenyon Webster

Private First Class **David Kenyon Webster** was an American soldier, journalist, and author. He was originally trained in Fox Company but then requested to transfer in Easy Company 506th Regiment of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division during World War II after D-Day. He was an aspiring writer who left Harvard to enlist in the paratroops. He was the focus for the episode The Last Patrol. He is best friends with Donald B. Hoobler and Robert Van Klinken.

## Biography

### Earlier Years

Webster was of English and Scottish descent. He was born in New York and educated at The Taft School, Watertown, Connecticut. In 1943, he volunteered for the paratroopers before having a chance to finish his studies as an English literature major at Harvard University.

### World War II

Webster originally trained with Fox Company, jumped on D-Day with Headquarters Company of the 2nd Battalion, then requested a transfer to Easy Company.

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" (also referred to as "The Crossroads"), near Arnhem, where the company was relocated after Operation Market Garden ended. Before he was wounded, his squad's machine gunners Mike Massaconi and Clancy Lyall were low on ammo. As Webster was their ammo bearer, Clancy and Mike yelled at him to bring more ammo, but Webster did not move out of his foxhole. After numerous shouts from both men, Clancy took out a grenade and threw it right in Webster's foxhole. The pin on the grenade was still in place, unbeknownst to Webster. Webster quickly fled up the dike to get ammo.

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 his absence and the loss of friends. He was treated as a replacement. Soon thereafter, Easy Company discovered their first concentration camp, witnessing firsthand the walking and also the unburied dead of the Landsberg Concentration Camp.

Author Stephen 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".

### Later Years and Disappearance

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 (Barbara), 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. He was never seen again.

## Trivia

* Webster's had a cameo in the first episode, Currahee. He was seen being trained with Easy Company despite the fact that he was supposed to be in Fox Company at that time.
* He uses his middle name 'Kenyon' while addressing his family in his letters.
* He was given a nickname such as College Boy, Einstein and Professor.
* In the ninth episode, Why We Fight, Webster was shouting and cursing at the Germans. Donald Malarkey says he doesn't remember Webster doing that.
	+ Webster, a Harvard English major, confessed that he found it difficult to adjust to the "vile, monotonous, and unimaginative language" such as foul words that used to describe cooks like *"those f-ckers"*, or *"f-cking cooks"*; what they did: *"f-ed it up again"* and what they produced. The language made these boys turning into men feel tough and more important, insiders, members of a group. Even Webster got used to it, although never liked it.
* He replaced Forrest Guth's as an interpreter in Haguenau in reality Webster was not on the patrol, but was involved in the patrol assigned to cover the patrol from across the river with an M1919 Browning.
* In the episode Points, Webster replaced John C. Lynch and Don Moone to eliminate the Nazi who was the head of the labor camp along with Liebgott and Sisk. In real life, Webster wasn't at the incident at all. Like Moone, Webster refuses to shoot the guilty man.
* He was also a journalist and author. One of his books is *Parachute Infantry* and *Myth and Maneater: The Story of The Shark*.
* 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 ten-part miniseries, "Band of Brothers."
* The miniseries isn't exactly consistent on how well Webster speaks German. He can make basic conversation and shout out commands here and in Replacements, while his command of the language seems far less (if not non-existent) in Why We Fight,Points and Wikipedia suggests he didn't speak it at all.
* 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 (specifically, at the University of New Orleans) 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.
* One of the memorable scene in the miniseries is where Webster gave a bar of chocolate to a young Dutch boy in the episode Replacements.

## References

1. ↑ http://www.davidkenyonwebster.com/lettershome.html
2. ↑ Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose
3. ↑ http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/06/band\_of\_brothers\_revisiting\_th\_1.html