Beyond Valor: World War II's Ranger and Airborne Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat

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Previous books have promised to describe the combat experience of the World War II GI, but there has never been a narrative like Patrick O'Donnell's Beyond Valor. Here is the first combat history of the war in Europe in the words of the men themselves, and perhaps the most honest and brutal account of combat ever told. For more than 50 years the individual stories that make up this narrative - shockingly frank recollections of sacrifice and courage - have been buried or circulated privately. Now, nearing the ends of their lives, our WWII soldiers have at last unburdened themselves.

Beyond Valor recaptures their hidden history, the history of the average GI. A poineering oral historian, Patrick O'Donnell used his award-winning Web site, the Drop Zone, to solicit oral and "e-histories" from individual soldiers. Gradually, as a community, some of the war's most battle-hardened soldiers were persuaded to tell their stories.

It is the story of the war not discussed in polite company. O'Donnell presents the wreckage of entire battalions nearly annihilated, invisible personal scars, and haunting revelations of wartime atrocities. But more important are the men who recount lives risked without hesitation for comrades and cause, and those who did not return: the friends who died in their arms.

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