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.”