Here is a review on Amazon of Dying Hard by a retired military officer.

“Meticulously researched, ten years in the making, Colonel MacLean’s book is a must have for anyone interested in leadership under duress. My soldiering days are behind me and my combat experience is dated, but I still turn to military history frequently—not to revel in the past, but to gather lessons learned so I can be a better leader out of uniform, a more effective executive decision maker, and a more compassionate person. Dying Hard fits the bill for me. I’ve underscored and highlighted key passages in my book and filled many pages with marginal notes.

It is also a tribute to the troops in any war that bear the brunt of combat and all that comes with it—infantrymen exposed to the elements, unrelenting danger, unshakeable fatigue, sleep deprivation, and constant stress. Like the works of Paul Fussell and E.B. Sledge, this is the unvarnished story of infantry soldiers in their own words, often told through letters they wrote to loved ones.


The author’s attention to detail adds immensely to the sense of being in the trenches with the sergeants, corporals, and private soldiers. He cites the morning report for each day of major combat, complete with a description of the daily weather (invariably wet, cold and generally miserable), the day’s casualty count, and how each man was killed. That’s the “black and white” of it—numbers on a piece of paper. The author then gives us the story behind the numbers, sometimes brutal, sometimes sentimental, always unsparing and riveting. I could not help but be reminded of how fragile a thing morale is and what good leaders do to preserve it.

Despite desperate fighting the men of B Company 1/39 Infantry Regiment experienced, there are vignettes that lay bare the humanity of American soldiers. That includes ribald GI humor as well as the compassion they felt for each other. The echo of President Reagan’s oft repeated words kept coming back to me as I read this book:

“Where do we find such young men?” They have been called the “Greatest Generation,” but my experience of soldiering in the 21st century is that our young American troops are not that much different; they remind me of my dad who fought in World War Two, not more than a few miles from the men of B Company.

We are now watching from a distance the grinding large scale combat operations of the kind B Company experienced, this time in Ukraine’s fight for its independence and sovereignty. Just add to the mix the incessant ever-present buzz of lethal drones overhead and not much else has changed for the infantry soldier. The term of art is “LSCO” – Large Scale Combat Operations – sounds ominous, and it should. All the more reason this book needs to be on the reading list at our own war colleges and combat arms schools.”