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This is a typical description in the School of the Soldier section at the end of most chapters.

Sleep – For many an infantryman he is always tired. Really tired; in fact, after the war, a Hürtgen veteran stated: “I saw men die under artillery fire because they were so tired that they were only able to scratch the outline of a foxhole in the dirt.”⁶³ Move here; move there. Carry this; carry that; now carry some more. Dig a foxhole all day; now go out on patrol tonight. Then go back in your foxhole and spend half of the rest of the night awake on security. And tomorrow? Do it all over again.

So, soldiers learn how to sleep in conditions that seem impossible to others. They are ingenious in staying dry enough to fall asleep, when water is dripping from overhanging trees, or oozing up from the wet ground below. Loud noises, causing civilians to wake up startled, are seemingly ignored by soldiers apparently slumbering in infant bliss. Once you get used to a few mortar rounds falling in your general vicinity, you can get used to almost anything. But don’t give in to the urge to sleep in captured bunkers; the straw inside is full of fleas and lice.

As to sleeping surfaces, GIs appear can almost levitate to be comfortable – curling around large rocks, avoiding sharp jutting roots, and steering clear of ground that might appear dry now, but will be damp by morning. Louis Benoist wrote about sleep: “You know you have seen pictures of infantrymen sleeping wherever they hit the ground. It can be done – I do it. After so long a time you have to get used to it. Not so bad when you do. After your hips get tough the ground gets pretty soft.” Some soldiers even claim they can slip into a sleeplike trance while walking – trudging one foot ahead of the other in thousands of repetitions – all the while staying the proper distance behind the trooper in front of him.

After the war, former combat soldiers – now fathers and grandfathers – can seemingly take a short catnap anywhere: the sofa; the ballgame; outside in the backyard, at the beach; listening to the wife, all while the kids and grandkids are running around screaming, crashing into furniture, playing tag, lighting fireworks, and causing general auditory mayhem.

Dying Hard is not just another war book.  It is also about how Americans lived back in the World War II years.  For example, you’ll read how soldiers back then scrounged and liberated alcohol, because, “No one is more creative than American service members at obtaining booze.  They drink to celebrate; they drink to reduce stress; they drink to relieve boredom; they drink to avoid facing the images of terror slinking through the dark recesses of their minds; and they drink just to get gassed.”

Even General George Patton got in the act, writing home to his wife about a special Old Fashioned cocktail, that he had helped create.  If he made it with his favorite bourbon, it went as follows: I.W. Harper’s Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey; “melt up a teaspoon of orange marmalade in a glass; add whiskey and stir; then add ice and drink; it is swell.  You put a little water in first to melt the marmalade it [doesn’t] melt well in whiskey.”

You’ll read about the boxing fight for the heavy-weight championship of the world between American Joe Louis and German Max Schmeling.  And how that was so important in society.  70 million people listened to the fight on radio in the US, as did a further 100 million around the world.  Because there was no TV back then.  You had to visualize in your mind what was going on.

And you’ll see how America’s most well-known Big Band leader, Glenn Miller, ended up in the US Army instead of the US Navy.

Then there’s baseball and its impact on America in this era.  And Company B got into that act as well, when prior to the war, the future Company B first sergeant, Joe Gravino, signed a Major League contract to play for the St. Louis Cardinals — not a farm team, but on the big club under Billy Southworth in St. Louis!

Just another war book?  Not hardly.  But you will read about how Bob Hope got his start, and how his USO show wasn’t just entertainment — although that was really important.  But more significantly, Bob Hope passed on what he sees overseas to the loved ones of these soldiers – who viewed his visits as vicarious travels they cannot make: “I was there.  I saw your sons and your husbands, your brothers, and your sweethearts.  I saw how they worked, played, fought, and lived.  I saw some of them die.  I saw more courage, more good humor in the face of discomfort, more love in an era of hate and more devotion to duty than could exist under tyranny.”