BY JACK LESSENBERRY

BEYOND VALOR: WORLD WAR II'S RANGER AND AIRBORNE VETERANS REVEAL THE HEART OF COMBAT. By Patrick O'Donnell. Simon and Schuster.

Simply put, Beyond Valor may be the most gripping book of war memoirs I have ever read -- and I have read a lot of them. That is
thanks in large part to both the skill of the author, who wasn't even born until a generation after World War II was over, and also
to the newest mass medium, the Internet, which didn't come of age until after the 1991 Gulf War.

What Patrick O'Donnell, a young historian, has done is to recapture, in a way no one else has, what the war really tasted, smelled,
and, most importantly, felt like, from the common soldier's perspective.

My first reaction on hearing of this book was to snort that Studs Terkel had done this better than anyone else could two decades ago
(The Good War). But this book, which deals only with American veterans in the European theatre, is in many ways better. None of the
accounts seems like rehashed six-decades-old stories, but instead sound like they happened yesterday afternoon:

". . . the only other German I saw had given up - he had his hands up. I just walked up to him; didn't say anything, and he took his
watch off and handed it to me. The guy who was guarding him said, "Why didn't you give that to me?" . . . That night we were put up
in a farmer's house. The Belgian farmer cooked supper for us. There was roasted chicken cooked in butter and this dark Belgian
bread - it was terrific. While we were talking around the stove, the farmer looked at my pipe. I had a pipe that I'd chewed the
wooden stem and it was coming apart. The farmer threw it in the fire and went over to his pipe case and gave me one of his."

It's not all that pleasant, but nearly all is that vivid. Readers feel they know what death and mud and slime smell like, what
artillery sounds like, what raw racism felt like. Beyond Valor allows us to know the men who fought in this war in a way a thousand
hours of documentaries on the History Channel never could; as flesh-and-blood people. This is thanks in large part to the author's
effort to establish a new form, the "e-history," via his Drop Zone World War II Virtual Museum - www.thedropzone.org - the first
on-line oral history project which aims to create a virtual community of veterans of the greatest war fought in human history.

In many cases, he got the often reluctant veterans to begin to open up through e-mail, then followed up with interviews in person.
This wasn't as easy as it sounds; many of these veterans had long since become wary of trying to explain what the war was like to
someone who wasn't there, let alone someone young enough to be their grandson. Some had never talked about it at all before.

But little by little, O'Donnell wore down their resistance. Though he is not a formally trained academic, the author is a superb
historian who knows full well that memory is a tricky thing. In many cases, his veterans have told stories at odds with the official
accounts. In such cases, he has worked as hard as an investigative journalist to verify what they have told him with several
sources. "In each interview, I tried to pull out the strongest memories. I never used a set of prepared questions. I'd like to think
they were conversations rather than interviews. As a result, these oral histories are more valid and candid than they otherwise
would be."

They sure are, right down to the memories of those psychologically damaged veterans who had trouble adjusting to civilian life after
the war. The author has also included many helpful maps, as well as something found in far too few such books- explanations so that
the civilian knows, for example, how many men were in a division. He also has divided the war into campaigns and written a short,
helpful introduction to each, so that any reader can appreciate the men's stories without bringing much prior knowledge to the
table.

About the only thing wrong with this book is that it seems too short - and that the title doesn't indicate it deals with the war in
Europe only. O'Donnell hints he may be planning a second volume dealing with the Pacific. To which I say, he'd better - and he'd
better hurry. Our World War II veterans are dying at the rate of 1,000 a day, and if I were his commanding officer, I would order
him to get to it. On the double.

Jack Lessenberry, The Blade's ombudsman, teaches journalism at Wayne State University in Detroit.