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

O'Donnell, Patrick K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684873842 ISBN 13: 9780684873848

Publisher: Free Press, 2001

Synopsis

Members of the Ranger and Airborne troops from World War II tell their own action-packed stories of dropping behind enemy lines, in a series of eyewitness accounts of the war in North Africa and Europe based on more than six hundred interviews with the veterans. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick K. O'Donnell is the creator of The Drop Zone (www.thedropzone.org), the first virtual community for WWII veterans and the interested public dedicated to collecting and sharing the stories of the war. The site has won praise from newspapers across the country such as The Wall Street Journal, which said, "The Drop Zone presents the remarkable and often terrifying war stories of U.S. Army Airborne and Ranger troops. Browse through a few of these tales and you will probably gain new respect for the older men in the Veterans Day parade." This book is the culmination of nine years of research.

Reviews

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, Inc.

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

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684873842
• ISBN 13: 9780684873848
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384