I am so torn about this book. I really wanted to like it, but I am rather cool toward recommending it unless you are doing research on Dog Company. I say that because it was about exactly what it says in the title: Dog Company. But that's the problem, it was about Dog Company. So the story starts with the formation of the company, follows it through training, through the brutality of their many, many actions during WWII, then closes with the closure of the company and a short Epilogue about the surviving members. So, if you want to learn about the company, and not focus on a few people, or a specific battle, I suppose you would love this well researched book.

Perhaps part of my opinion is colored by the fact that I listened to Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe du Hoc as an audiobook and did not have access to the physical book. This means my review is colored by the narration and what I can recall. The narration, by the way, was exceptional, reminding me of the narrator of With The Old Breed, by E.B. Sledge.

Patrick K. O'Donnell clearly researched the unit in detail, interviewing a number of living survivors. As with many military narrations the cast of characters is wide, and the events and movements can be confusing. Such is the nature of warfare. Once the battle begins, clarity and planning fade, leaving battles to be won or lost on the critical decisions made by men on the ground. Unfortunately, in Dog Company the details and descriptions go on and on. Some will view this as wonderful. Some, including me, will not. ( )

I had read about the difficult D-Day assault of Pointe du Hoc before, but here O'Donnell provides greater detail. Perhaps due to the film, many are left with the impression that the Rangers took the Pointe on the first day after scaling the cliffs, but as it turns out the Axis troops counterattacked repeatedly. The author also follows Dog Company in other battles later in the war. The stories are all well researched and make for gripping drama. ( )

This is an ultimately well done history of the Rangers, an elite group of U.S. soldiers, who took on some of the toughest and most deadly missions of the invasion of Europe, starting with scaling massive cliffs under heavy fire on D-Day to go after a set of heavy artillery pieces that had command of the Normandy beaches. As the title makes clear, the book focuses on Company D, or Dog Company.

I actually started this book with a bit of trepidation, as the author is described on the inside back cover as a "combat historian, bestselling author and renowned leadership speaker." It was that third item that set raised my defenses a bit, as I feared I'd be reading a motivational tome rather than a good and accurate military history. There is a bit of ham-fisted writing, especially in the book's early going as the assembling and training of the group is described. The lessons of that training are described as seeping into the soldiers' "every bone and fiber," for example.

Once the men go to war on D-Day, however, that sort of rah rah bravado gets mostly left behind. O'Donnell clearly did a lot of research and conducted as many interviews with veterans of the company as he could, along with walking all of the battlefields. I don't want to give the wrong idea. The achievement of these men was truly impressive and, well, inspirational in many ways. And O'Donnell does not stint from intense, detail-filled descriptions of the moment by moment fears and horrors of combat, particularly the effects of trying to survive, physically and mentally, one prolonged and terrifying artillery barrage after another for days on end. I learned a lot. ( )

This was presented in a friendly, casual way but dealt with some serious military incidents. I actually enjoyed the flow of the narrative very much but have to question the historical presentation of some of the stories. ( )