Introduction

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
— Laurence Binyon, "For the Fallen"

In 1939, just twenty-one years after the end of a war more destructive than anything humanity had dreamed possible, Europe began a war that proved even more horrific and more widespread, bringing all the intervening technological advances to bear against civilians and soldiers alike. In December 1941, the United States joined a battle in which the stakes were enormous and the outcome by no means certain. But the story of war is familiar. Less familiar is the very personal and human side of war, a side often purposely hidden from easy view: war as seen, heard, smelled, and felt in the day-to-day front-line experience of the combat soldier. This book tells that hidden story, through the oral and e-mail histories of America's elite infantry troops who fought in World War II's European theater — paratroopers, gliderme ... read full excerpt from Beyond Valor: World War II's Rangers and Airborne Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat ebook