UNCOMMON VALOR

This exceptional book, seemingly composed in the daily flash of gunfire, is both a hymn to the American Army and American heritage of bravery. It is written ""because we loved these men very much."" It carries the history of the American soldier from Concord to Korea, and if it ignores acts of lack-of-valor (as with G.I. prisoners in Korea), those failures simply are not this book's subject. One of the most moving moments herein is the double confession of a widow of a West Pointer killed in Korea, in which she had told her husband not to be a hero. When he received a posthumous modal, her loos was relieved by the lack of abstraction in the life they had together. Equally moving is General MacArthur's farewell address to the West Point cadets. But the true ballast of Merrill's collected reminiscences by men who were there, at the mountains to be braved and the valley of death, rests in their own grammar, misspelling and syntax of action. These are excerpts from the hot heart of battle. The illustrations, of war posters and soldiers from all our wars, are wonderful.