Parachute Infantry: The book that inspired Band of Brothers

About David Webster

David Kenyon Webster left Harvard to join the paratroopers training at Camp Toccoa Georgia. He could have used the influence of his wealthy family to land a comfortable desk job but he was determined to do his duty and to see the war from the point of view of an ordinary soldier. He parachuted into Normandy the night before the D-Day landings and later into Holland as part of Operation Market Garden going on to participate in the capture of Hitlers Eagles Nest at the end of the war. After the war Webster worked as a journalist. On 9 September 1961 he went missing while shark fishing off the coast of California. His body was not found. His memoir remained unpublished until Stephen Ambrose discovered it using it as a key source for his book Band of Brothers and later the series. It was Ambroses championing of the work that led to its eventual publication.