Harry Crosby really did stay up for 75 hours in the run up to D-Day. He was ordered to rest the night before the operation, and awoke 24 hours later.
The book Lt. Jefferson is reading is The Moon and Sixpence (1919), a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is the story of Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker, who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist. The story is, in part, based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin.