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Title: Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
List Price: $14.00
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| Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator by Penguin (Non-Classics) A new favorite book! | | I didn't discover this book until around 2003, I think it was. I'd just read Hynes' other memoir, The Growing Seasons, and wanted to know what happened next. I ordered Flights of Passage and absolutely loved it! I've read it a couple more times since then and even wrote to Sam asking him what happened next? More story, please! He did tell me that he was reactivated briefly by the USMC during the Korean War, but never got to Korea. Said he thinks he may have been the only active duty marine at that time working on a dissertation in English Lit. Sam showed up as one of the principals on Ken Burns' PBS special, The War. His presence and his part of the narration added a special kind of added "class" to the production. He tells me he's been working most recently on a book about aviators from the First World War. Hope he gets it done soon. I know I'll read it. Sam Hynes makes good writing look easy. - Tim Bazzett, author of Soldier Boy and Love, War & Polio | | Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator by Penguin (Non-Classics) "Good Wars" Still Kill | Watching planes fly over his Minneapolis home, young Samuel Hynes never imagined himself flying in one, let alone being a pilot. He never saw an ocean, yet before he turned 21, he would be flying and fighting over the largest of them. World War II was a transforming conflict in many ways. For Hynes, it was his ticket to a larger world.
Not that he seems too happy for the experience. Yes, Hynes writes with humor, and some nostalgia, about his experiences fighting in the Pacific Theater with the Marines air wing in the last year of the war. Yet, when he describes his feelings about his return to civilian life as "the end of something that had been good, perhaps like the breaking up of a marriage," it feels odd and wrong.
Hynes didn't see a lot of combat, but he saw a lot of waste, deadly waste, pilots in training killed attempting maneuvers, or else later on, lost at sea because they were lost in the clouds. There are attacks on a Japanese-held island tucked too deep behind Allied lines to threaten anyone. There's no glory in Samuel Hynes' war; even the deaths of Japanese foes are related with bitter resignation.
Hynes writes of his and his comrades' struggle less in terms of victory than simple survival, doing what the military asks them and no more. Hynes mentions the film classics "Wings" and "Dawn Patrol," but there's more here of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," where the carnage of World War II is played as a sick joke. Even the humor has that same acidic quality. When one pilot is lost at sea, only to be rescued, his comrades disguise their relief by pretending to have gotten rid of his belongings when he returns.
The book is three-fourths over before Hynes reaches the only real battle he participated in, Okinawa. As he hops from post to post stateside, the narrative sometimes gets dull. But the overall tone of "Flights Of Passage is what makes it worth reading. With most war books, the focus is naturally on battles, or individuals who made some difference in the conflict. Hynes, a self-described small cog in giant machine, writes of the other side of war, its boredom, pettiness, infidelity, and creeping ennui. Danger, too, and tragedy, but in such small doses one can never be ready for them, not ready enough.
While his style is dispassionate and nonjudgmental, I get the feeling Hynes didn't care much for what he saw of the war. It's not that he was a bad Marine, just not a warrior.
His best sections involve the spurts of battle he did see, his impressions of flying the different combat planes of the era. Corsairs were prized as beauties but prone to spinning out during landing approaches, while the Hellfighters were "all muscle and no guts."
Hynes spends a lot of time on his comrades, but except for one hotshot he gets close to named Joe, none really stick out, not even Hynes. Carefully written, at times beautifully, the book avoids any non-factual embellishments that might make it more readable but less true, the kind that other memoirists would defend as compensation for fading memory. The result is a flat, dry read, but one you trust to tell it like it was.
I'm glad for the service Hynes gave his country, more perhaps than Hynes himself. But his book makes clear why wars, even when fought for the most noble of purposes, leave scars and a sense of loss that outweighs any triumph, however worthy. | | Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator by Penguin (Non-Classics) Flights of Passage soars.... | Mr. Hynes work originally attracted me because, as an aviation historian, I enjoy first person accounts. My interest was drawn to the book when he mentioned that some of his training was in Florida--my state of birth. Having noticed the town Deland in his account I acquired the volume for a check of conditions in the state during the was (having 2 uncles who were naval aviators). It was an interesting picture of the US in another era--a Florida I used to know. I was by the Deland airport (it is noted as "Deland Naval Air Station--1942-46) (We fought the war, finished it and shut down the war machine.) In fact the majority of now-civilian airports were built during WWII. This was a bittersweet tale of men who were part of a much larger effort; but didn't regard their contribution as telling.
The last chapter has the memorable line "You can go back in space, but not back in time. Lucius B. Gravely, IV | | Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator by Penguin (Non-Classics) A realistic account of Americans going to war | | Samuel Hynes, professor emiterius of literature at Princeton University, went to war in 1943--there simply was no alternative as he says--and in time graduated from flight school as a Marine pilot of a TBM, a torpedo bomber used for several types of missions. To those who went through flight school during WWII, his accounts of the trials, and sometimes failures, of a flying officer in training ring authentic, as does the sometimes pettiness of the armed forces and the hurry-up-and-wait process that dogged us as we impatiently waited to get into action. He also details the drinking, the sexual adventures, and other less savory, perhaps, actions of men at war. When he finally arrived overseas in early 1945, the actual combat was somewhat of an anti-climax. No great aerial battles, relatively few losses, and much relatively routine patrol work. In fact, the most terrifying event was after the war when a giant typhoon hit Okinawa and his base. As is true of those in service, he seems oblivious of the war other than his own small part. He was stationed, for example, on Saipan in April for two weeks or so awaiting assignment, but makes no mention of the many B-29 operations from there or neighboring Tinian against Japan. A curious thing about the book is that before he went overseas, he was married. Viritually nothing is said of his wife, her letters, of the relationship. Much more is said of he and his Marine buddies trying to obtain booze and other leisure pursuits, in addition to combat.. Perhaps Hynes marriage was one of those wartime marriages that didn't last. On the other hand, maybe it's none of our business since Hynes' purpose is to try and give one a realistic view of training to go to war and the event itself. In this regard he succeeds brilliantly. | | Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator by Penguin (Non-Classics) an interesting read for adventure, history, people | | I read Samuel Hynes's THE GROWING SEASONS with a book-club, I said why don't I also read this famous novel of his together with it. It turned out to be a good idea! Flights of Passage has a lot of recounting of people's relationships, emotions. Not only it is a good 'literary' novel, it also captivates people who's interested in adventure with detail descriptions of flying. To me, it is a good novel because it offers a glimpse in American life from several different angles, the language is smooth and interesting, the story telling is truthful. | | Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator by Penguin (Non-Classics) Product Description | | He was a wide-eyed teenager when he left his Minnesota home in 1943 to learn to fly. By the end of World War II, he was a battle-worn Marine bomber pilot who'd survived more than a hundred missions in the Pacific. With stunning eloquence and breathtaking clarity, Samuel Hynes recalls those extraordinary years: the madness of war and the horror of death, the friendships forged in cockpits and gin mills, the wives and sweethearts left at home, and the wonder of flying-that exquisite harmony between pilot and machine aloft in the insubstantial air. More than a combat tale, this is the story of one man's remarkable rite of passage in that timeless world of innocence gone to war. |
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