Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich [Paperback]

After Webster's untimely death in 1961 at the age of 39, his widow continued to believe in the manuscript and approached publishers without success. After the late Stephen Ambrose came upon the manuscript while researching Band of Brothers, he recommended it to Louisiana State University Press. Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich, with an introduction by Stephen E. Ambrose, was published by LSU Press in 1994, just in time for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. The book received excellent reviews.

Last year, Webster's widow, the long-time champion of Parachute Infantry, approached Dell Publishing, a division of Random House. Dell was a likely choice: it had published a mass market paperback of Webster's shark book, Myth and Maneater: The Story of the Shark, when the movie "Jaws" was released. She felt that Parachute Infantry could find a wider audience now, given the interest in HBO's "Band of Brothers." Dell was interested, and went back to the original manuscript to produce a revised and expanded edition of the book.

In October 2002, this new edition of Parachute Infantry was published. It features over 100 pages of previously unpublished material, including 20 letters home, and restores some of the grittier language and actual names that were used in Webster's original manuscript.

If you want to know more about the men of Easy Company, as seen through the eyes of one young private, read this book. Webster takes you through training at Toccoa, through jumps on D-Day and in Operation Market Garden in Holland, and to the last days of the war in Germany. It is an excellent companion piece to Band of Brothers (the book or DVD/video), and a powerful, unforgettable book on its own.

The bad news to report from this front is that there is also a bit of Ernie (as in Bert and Ernie) and the buffoonish character Ernest (from 'Ernest goes to camp' and other forgettable movies). Webster insists on being slow. He hates almost everything he is told to do, much of what he does, and most of those around him. A few, goofy buddies offer insights into the dark side of soldiering, from looting, to whoring, to harassing the defeated German populace, while also shuffling and grinning through a significant part of his story.

Webster comes across as mean-spirited, unlike his portrayal in Band of Brothers and while he makes some reference to his education and wealth, it doesn't show. He makes little of the distance from his platoon when he returns in February 1945 after four months of convalescence from a flesh wound in Holland (and he's most sorry that it was no 'million dollar wound'). He comes across as constantly put upon, abused, and mistreated by his own army. Sure, much of military life allows and calls for grousing, and his company faced some pretty sorry times; it just seems repetitive and pointless. He probably deserved and he would have been better off with better instruction, information and leadership from his superiors.

His sense of sound, smell, weather and place is helpful to the reader. The way he describes the sound of different German shells and ordnance provides a better sense of presence to the inexperienced reader. But the story lacks a strong narrative. He jumps around from place to person without useful transitions. It would seem fair to conclude that he patched together (or did his editor, posthumously) diary entries capturing events in real time.

To one interested in and pretty well read in this genre, the text dragged and disappointed. Up close and personal this may be, it just left me surprisingly unsympathetic and bored.