[.ca] Flights Of Passage (ISBN 0142002909)

Talk About Situational Irony!:
By the time I got to the last page of Samuel Hynes's memoir GROWING SEASONS, I had developed such an attachment to young Sam that I was reluctant to quit reading. Luckily Hynes had written an earlier memoir about his days as a dive bomber pilot during WWII entitled FLIGHTS OF PASSAGE. Imagine my surprise when I spotted the book already in my bookcase. I'd read it when it was published in 1988. I had to read it again. Hynes writes with such humility it's easy to put yourself in his shoes. Sam is continually worried about being cut from the flight program and sent to Great Lakes to train as an enlisted man. He also doesn't shirk from describing the times he crashed his plane or did something stupid, trying to show off. Although he went on over a hundred missions on Okinawa, he isn't sure his contribution to the war effort was worth that much. He's disappointed when he's left behind when his squadron goes on a bombing run of Japan. As an ex-Navy man myself I can relate to a lot of what Hynes went through: the depressing bus stations, the sexual braggadocio, the feeling of vertigo when changing duty stations, the hurry-up-and-wait mentality, the obsession with drinking and playing cards. About the only problem I have with the book is that the other pilots don't really come alive for me--I had trouble remembering who they were. Sam also gets married (at nineteen) before going overseas, but we never get to know his wife. He doesn't say much about her letters; he doesn't even seem to miss her. I had an ominous feeling about that marriage. Perhaps the most memorable part of the book is when the war ends and Hynes and his fellow pilots are sitting around waiting for orders and they're caught in a typhoon! It blows away several tents and several men are killed. Talk about situational irony.

"Flights" Has Trouble Soaring:
Mr. Hynes does include detail in his book. He includes detail after detail. After detail. He includes so much detail that the reader is choking on it long before anything of significance happens. And then there are his observations. When finally he makes his first real bombing run, it is unsuccessful. He notes that "I had missed the war, or it had missed me." Say what? "Flights of Passage" does not (to me) flow as a single work. It seems to move in fits and starts, going from one direction to another. It seems almost aimless. This book will give you some insights into what it was like to come of age as a young man in a lethal occupation during World War II. But you will have to work hard for the lessons.