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Summary: Talk About Situational Irony!
Review: 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.
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Summary: A lyrical book about the coming of age of a boy during WWII
Review: I have read this book 4 times now, and it gets better every time. Samuel Hynes has achieved something a lot of other writers have not. He has written about events that happened to him decades before, yet tells his story with the same sense of wonder as if it had just happened to him. This is a blunt, emotional, and at times extraordinarily humorous book that pulls no punches in its depictions of military life and the actions of young men about to go off to war. It is a shame it is out of print. If you can find a copy, whether through Amazon or at your library, it is worth reading over and over again!
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Summary: Samuel Hynes becomes a Marine Aviator during WWII.
Review: If you think this is just another old man remembering World War Two, you would be right.But this isn't some "blood and guts" recollection from the old timer who had one too many at the VFW, it is an honest and sincere account of young men coming of age at the height of the war. Hynes sets out to become a Marine flyer in 1943 and along the way to realizing this goal he introduces us to other real people like Joe,T, Rock,and Bergie. By the time Hynes and his friends get their wings and are trained as a Torpedo Bomber Pilots it is late in the war.But they are just in time for Okinawa. I originally bought this book because my fathers brother was a gunner on Hynes' pal Bergies aircraft, and I was looking for the attitude of that generation of young men that went off to fight in the last "good war". I wasn't disappointed.
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Summary: A realistic account of Americans going to war
Review: 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.
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