The success of Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation has sparked a renewed interest in books about World War II and the people who fought in it. Patrick K. O'Donnell maintains, however, that behind those official histories and carefully crafted memoirs lies a "hidden war"--"a bottled up, buried version shielded even from family members because many of the memories are too painful to discuss." In Beyond Valor, O'Donnell brings this hidden war to the surface, allowing men from the elite forces to tell their own stories, thus creating a fascinating combat history of WWII.

O'Donnell introduces readers to some of the greatest of the greatest generation--men such as Robert Kinney of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, wounded by a mortar at Anzio ("it tore my fanny open, took a big chunk of meat out of there--I could afford that"). While in the hospital, wounded members of the regiment were asked by one of their officers to return to the front: We all went down, about forty of us in casts, bandages, arms in slings and everything. He said, "Your buddies up there are catching hell and we've got to go back if we can. You don't have to, we're not going to order you, but we're looking for volunteers." We said, "Hell, we'll go." We had just the best-spirited bunch of scrappers you ever saw. There are also stories about compassion in the midst of carnage. Albert Hassenzahl of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment was seriously injured on a drop during the Normandy invasion. While waiting to be rescued, the wind blew his blanket off him. A man on an adjacent stretcher reached over and carefully tucked the blanket in around Hassenzahl. The other man was a German POW. "I didn't say a word to him, but I was able to move my head a little and looked over at him ... neither of us said a word, but mentally I might have said 'thank you' with my eyes and he might have said 'you're welcome' with his."

Though it will certainly appeal to them, O'Donnell insists that Beyond Valor is not aimed at war buffs--it's for the soldiers themselves. "My work has been one of preservation, done in gratitude for a generation that sacrificed so much." By sharing these stories, O'Donnell has helped to preserve and honor their memory. --Sunny Delaney


From Publishers Weekly
Recalling harrowing rescue missions, gun battles and the knee-deep swamp mud that forced soldiers to hold up their comrades' heads while they slept to keep them from drowning, veterans from elite WWII units relive the Pacific theater in Into the Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat. Editor Patrick K. O'Donnell (Beyond Valor) interviewed hundreds of veterans for this oral history of the battles at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and other locations. Brief testimonies of horrifying violence and hair-raising close calls are sometimes described with emotion, other times in brutally honest deadpan. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Creator of The Drop Zone (www.thedropzone.org), a pioneer web site for oral and e-histories , O'Donnell here chronicles America's elite military units, the Rangers, the glider infantry, and the airborne of World War II. These units have formed a unique bond that has lasted half a century. Since 1996, O'Donnell has amassed hundreds of interviews and thousands of photographs and memorabilia of these special World War II units, and this book is an extension of his ongoing project. It contains several dozen recollections of veterans throughout the war, each prefaced by the author's brief summary of the events to be described in first person. Beginning with the Dieppe Raid in 1942 and continuing through the campaigns of North Africa, Italy, D-Day, France, and the final push into Germany, these accounts reveal the human side of war. The accounts of Operation Market Garden, Normandy, and the Battle of the Bulge are especially illuminating. The result reads like a good documentary. This fresh, personal, and revealing look into the past is recommended for most public and special collections, and the web site is also worth viewing.DDavid M. Alperstein, Queens Borough P.L., Jamaica, NY Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
"The trauma to me was deep and lasting. And the battle will always be yesterday." This is a collection of oral histories told by rangers and airborne veterans. These are the heroes who won WWII, and then shut their mouths. Fifty years later, they feel they can speak their minds. Eight different actors play the parts of different men. They recall grisly and glorious moments, incidents they have tried hard to forget. Prisoners are shot; GIs burst into tears, refuse orders, show extraordinary bravery. If there's a single theme, it's the love these soldiers had for one another. They're all pacifists now. Thank God they weren't pacifists then. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
A natural reticence to express their experiences characterizes survivors of combat, which makes the more remarkable this set of remembrances the author has induced from American veterans of airborne and Ranger units that fought in Europe. The soldiers' reluctance, as many of them point out, stems from words' absolute inadequacy to convey the noise, gore, and wastage of war; yet O'Donnell has convinced dozens to try. He prefaces their memories with concise summaries and maps of their individual locations in the big picture, then lets the men speak. Their stories, paradoxically, are often difficult to read yet impossible not to. For example, more than a few admit to shooting prisoners, without doubt war crimes; yet the crimes committed in the context of stress, such as the obliteration of buddies, are unimaginable from the distance of 55 years and a comfortable armchair. However ineffable to those who weren't there, the emotions of combat are at least understandable, thanks to O'Donnell's ability to draw out his interviewees. A potent addition to World War II memoir literature. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the first parachute drops in North Africa to the final battles in Germany, U.S. Ranger and Airborne troops saw the worst action of World War II. In Beyond Valor, Patrick O'Donnell, a pioneer of Internet-based "oral history" who has collected the first-person stories of hundreds of veterans on his online oral history project, re-creates the frontline experience in stunning detail, weaving together more than 650 "e-histories" and interviews into a seamless narrative. In recollections filled with pain, poignancy, and pride, veterans chronicle the destruction of entire battalions, speak of their own personal scars, and pay tribute to their fallen colleagues. Beyond Valor brings to light the hidden horrors and uncelebrated heroics of a war fought by a now-vanishing generation and preserves them for all future generations.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Recalling harrowing rescue missions, gun battles and the knee-deep swamp mud that forced soldiers to hold up their comrades' heads while they slept to keep them from drowning, veterans from elite WWII units relive the Pacific theater in Into the Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat. Editor Patrick K. O'Donnell (Beyond Valor) interviewed hundreds of veterans for this oral history of the battles at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and other locations. Brief testimonies of horrifying violence and hair-raising close calls are sometimes described with emotion, other times in brutally honest deadpan. ( Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Over a hundred individual veterans' vignettes are drawn from oral histories and electronically transmitted memoirs ("e-histories") in this assemblage of firsthand accounts of the WWII American Airborne, Ranger and other special units. Instrumental to the collection of these stories was O'Donnell's special-interest Web site, The Drop Zone (www.thedropzone.org), which functions as a "virtual museum" of vet experience. The book itself, after a brief introduction sketching the origins of the special units, is comprised of chapters devoted to a dozen operations in the European theater, from initial forays at Dieppe and North Africa, through Italy and Normandy, to final months in Holland and Germany. One chapter covers the home front experiences of African-American troops in the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. O'Donnell furnishes a cogent introductory overview of each operation, after which a number of veterans describe their memories of the action. Most of these remembrances are work-a-day, telegraphic run-downs of key situations beach landings and marches to lines, a night in the cargo hold of a destroyer, a diversionary attack on a fortified town that leave a lot of emotional baggage under the surface, in favor of often mortal logistics (some of which involves atrocities on both sides). Most fail to make their situations vivid or compelling to the uninitiated. (Mar. 12) Forecast: While this title is a Main Selection of the Military History Book Club, it assumes a fair amount of interest in and familiarity with its subjects, and won't get much beyond the buff market. Nevertheless, scholars will find it a font of well-documented primary source material and developers might comb it for film or TV-worthy vignettes. Meanwhile, the Drop Zone, which has gotten press mentions in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other papers, may generate further sales. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Creator of The Drop Zone (www.thedropzone.org), a pioneer web site for oral and e-histories , O'Donnell here chronicles America's elite military units, the Rangers, the glider infantry, and the airborne of World War II. These units have formed a unique bond that has lasted half a century. Since 1996, O'Donnell has amassed hundreds of interviews and thousands of photographs and memorabilia of these special World War II units, and this book is an extension of his ongoing project. It contains several dozen recollections of veterans throughout the war, each prefaced by the author's brief summary of the events to be described in first person. Beginning with the Dieppe Raid in 1942 and continuing through the campaigns of North Africa, Italy, D-Day, France, and the final push into Germany, these accounts reveal the human side of war. The accounts of Operation Market Garden, Normandy, and the Battle of the Bulge are especially illuminating. The result reads like a good documentary. This fresh, personal, and revealing look into the past is recommended for most public and special collections, and the web site is also worth viewing.--David M. Alperstein, Queens Borough P.L., Jamaica, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

"The trauma to me was deep and lasting. And the battle will always be yesterday." This is a collection of oral histories told by rangers and airborne veterans. These are the heroes who won WWII, and then shut their mouths. Fifty years later, they feel they can speak their minds. Eight different actors play the parts of different men. They recall grisly and glorious moments, incidents they have tried hard to forget. Prisoners are shot; GIs burst into tears, refuse orders, show extraordinary bravery. If there's a single theme, it's the love these soldiers had for one another. They're all pacifists now. Thank God they weren't pacifists then. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Internet Book Watch

Patrick O'Donnell's Beyond Valor is the gripping story of World War II battlefield experiences and performances by American Rangers and Airborne troops. The exploits and hardships of these elite military units are thoroughly documented in a vivid, informative text that puts the reader into the front lines (and behind the lines) to reveal a combat history told in the participants own words. This is a record that needs to be preserved as that generation is now rapidly departing from among us. Their's is a story that must be told and Beyond Valor is a superbly presented account that would make a welcome and "reader friendly" addition to personal, academic, and community library military history collections. Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

These paratroopers and Rangers speak for themselves in phrases simple, forceful, and extraordinarily poignant. What is so striking and saddening is the persistency of pain fifty-five years later. Beyond Valor teaches realities of World War II combat that I have encountered in no other book. — (Gerald F. Linderman, author of The World Within War: America's Combat Experience in World War II, Professor Emeritus Univ. Michigan)

Patrick O'Donnell's Beyond Valor is a dramatic and poignant oral history account of combat as seen from the sharp end by those who fought it. More than yet another tribute to the World War II generation of American soldiers, Beyond Valor captures war as it was fought: in all its ugliness, heroism, pathos, and incompetence. What Steven Spielberg accomplished visually for the cinema in Saving Private Ryan, Patrick O'Donnell has accomplished through the printed word. — (Carlo D'Este, author of Patton: A Genius for War)

These narratives are highly charged, emotional, dramatic, intense. The horrific underside of war has seldom been exposed so graphically. What is shown here, often very powerfully, is the "Bad War," which we prefer not to know too much about. — (Stanley Weintraub, Professor Emeritus Penn. State University, author of MacArthur's War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero)

The pioneering oral historian Patrick K. O'Donnell has done a wonderful job of making the experiences of America's elite troops come alive again in Beyond Valor. These riveting oral and e-mail accounts by glidermen and rangers and paratroopers are reminiscent of such books by Stephen E. Ambrose as D-Day and Citizen Soldiers. — (Douglas Brinkley, director of the Eisenhower Center and Professor of History at the University of New Orleans)

My own father served in WWII, and I always wanted him to share his experiences, but we only got bits and pieces. The memories were just too painful. Time is running out for this "vanishing generation," and unless someone like Mr. O'Donnell takes the time to gather these stories, a part of the Second World War will be lost forever. No simple narrative of a battle can give you the viewpoint of these now-aged warriors. — (Larry K. Bond, author of The Enemy Within and Day of Wrath)

W.E.B. Griffin

Told by the GIs of WWII in their own words, the extraordinary personal histories collected here prove that real war ultimately can only be explained by those who fought it, and that the true heroes too often go uncelebrated. Beyond Valor is a fitting memorial to these men. — (W. E. B. Griffin, author of The Corps and the Men at War Series)

John S.D. Eisenhower

Beyond Valor is a great war book. It has pathos, excitement, and sometimes suspense. Above all it reminds us that wars are fought by men on the ground, not in the war rooms of higher headquarters. — (John S. D. Eisenhower author of Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott