Beyond Valor: World War II's Ranger and Airborne Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat in Their Own Words, the Personal Stories of Americas World War II Veterans

New York: The Free Press, 2001. Reprint. Second printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvi, 366 pages. Illustrations. Maps. Methodology. Order of Battle. Notes. Index. Signed by author. DJ has slight wear and soiling, with small edge wear. Combat historian, bestselling author, and public speaker Patrick K. O'Donnell has written ten critically acclaimed books that recount the epic stories of America's wars from the Revolution to Iraq. He is a premier expert on elite and special operations units and irregular warfare. The author's skills and expertise have been tapped by government agencies, including DARPA. For the agency, O'Donnell assisted in the development of modern weapons systems for urban warfare, researched and analyzed counterinsurgency strategies and tactics, and assessed German technology from WWII, focusing on its application to the modern battlefield. He has been selected to lecture at numerous agencies and branches of the armed forces, such as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), U.S. Army Special Forces, U.S. ARMY, and USMC. Each one of his books contains scores, if not hundreds, of oral history interviews he personally conducted, combined with years of archival research. 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 on the printed page. For more than fifty years the individual stories that make up this narrative have been bottled up, buried, or circulated privately. Now, our WWII soldiers have unburdened themselves. "Beyond Valor" recaptures their hidden history. A pioneering oral historian, Patrick O'Donnell used his award-winning website, The Drop Zone, to solicit oral- and "e-histories" from individual soldiers. Gradually, O'Donnell convinced some of the war's most battle-hardened soldiers to tell their stories. The result is WWII seen through the eyes of the men who saw the most intense of its action. O'Donnell focuses on the elite units of the war -- the Rangers, Airborne, and 1st Special Service Force -- troops that spearheaded the most dangerous operations and often made the difference between victory and defeat. From more than 650 interviews O'Donnell has chosen oral- and e-histories that form a seamless story line, a history of the war in Europe from the first parachute drops in North Africa through the final battles in Germany and the trip home. O'Donnell presents the wreckage and haunting revelations of wartime.