The Harrowing Wartime Experiences Of David Kenyon Webster
Public DomainDavid Kenyon Webster’s time with Easy Company could be difficult, and he likely left the war disillusioned.
David Kenyon Webster, played by Eion Bailey, isn’t deeply explored until late in the Band of Brothers miniseries: Episode 8, “The Last Patrol.” But the real Webster had had a harrowing wartime experience before that point.
Born on June 2, 1922, in New York City, Webster was enrolled at Harvard University when he put his studies on hold to volunteer as a paratrooper during World War II. Originally assigned to Fox Company, Webster’s first experience of war was when he parachuted into Normandy on D-Day.
Soon afterward, Webster transferred to Easy Company, but he was injured during an assault on “The Island” (depicted in Episode 5, “Crossroads”) and thus missed battles in Bastogne and Foy. By the time Webster rejoined Easy Company in Haguenau, he wasn’t exactly given a warm welcome.
“He was wounded in Holland, missing the terrible Battle of the Ardennes, the cold, hunger, pain… which we endured, The E-Company, before we arrived in the city of Haguenau,” Donald Malarkey told the website D-Day Overlord. “David only talked to others about Harvard, this great school he had left before he joined Camp Toccoa, and that he finally appeared to us as a character belonging to another world.”
HBOEion Bailey portraying David Kenyon Webster in Band of Brothers.
Episode 8, which follows Webster’s reintegration with the unit, depicts a scene in which Webster and others go across German lines to bring back prisoners to interrogate. One of the prisoners is injured, and they leave him behind, but they can hear his cries of agony and contemplate putting him out of his misery. In the show, Private Roy Cobb snaps, “F*ck his misery.”
In real life, however, Webster and another soldier tried to throw grenades at the German to end his suffering. In the end, it was actually Cobb who succeeded in doing so. A later scene, in which Cobb taunts Webster as a “college boy,” is only partly true — and Cobb was eventually court-martialed for getting drunk and charging at First Lieutenant Jack Foley.
Band of Brothers also leaves out David Kenyon Webster’s tragic and mysterious end. After leaving the Army and returning to civilian life, he disappeared at sea in 1961 at the age of 39 while fishing near Santa Monica.
