Parachute Infantry - David Webster

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Résumé :
The remarkable memoir of paratrooper David Kenyon Webster, member of 'Easy Company', the US Army mission to capture Hitler's Eagle's Nest. He records his fight through Holland taking enemy towns, taking a bullet in the leg, and enduring long periods of boredom punctuated by sudden moments of terror. This was the inspiration behind the hugely popular TV miniseries Band of Brothers.

Biographie:
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 Hitler's Eagle's 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 His memoir remained unpublished until Stephen Ambrose discovered it, using it as a key source for his book Band of Brothers and later the series.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 Ambrose's championing of the work that led to its eventual publication.