Flights of Passage: reflections of a World War II aviator by Samuel Hynes

This book, first published 26 years ago, successfully evokes the picture of what it was like for a young man aged 19 to enter the service, learn how to fly, and be shipped to the Pacific, to participate in the final days of World War II. Hynes spent 2 years and 8 months away from his home, going in as a scared teenager and exiting as a flier, a married man and one who had experienced combat. 

Hynes became an academic and is now retired from Princeton, where he was the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature. (We have four of his books on literary criticism, in addition to this memoir.)  Hynes wrote “Flights of Passage” forty years after the war, but pretty well succeeds with his aim to write it from the sensibility of the 19 year old, not from the professor’s viewpoint.  It might be because of this, but it is not a “deep” story.  We can identify and root for the young man who wants to succeed, not fail, and who also wants to fit in. When we hear of deaths and tragedies, however, they are duly noted and passed over…sometimes Hynes remarks on how the Japanese kamikaze attacks struck he and the others as being alien to themselves – and how strange it was to inhabit islands where the original inhabitants has all been transported elsewhere, so the Americans could dig in and fight. 

What stays with you is the instincts of the young, particularly the young men, and how they settle into whatever huts or barracks are offered, take on the routine that is set out for them, and still manage to keep their individuality, their pranks, their anger and their simple high spirits.  You realize that the age old tradition of the comic song was alive and well in those days, and belting out irreverent and (sometimes) obscene lyrics was a common pastime.  Details like describing the songs, and how they were sung, help to recreate that age, before TV, when simple kids really were simple, and even the smart alecks not that much more sophisticated.

Another nice touch throughout the book is Hyne’s description of flying.  Beautiful imagery captures the lyricism of flight as well as the danger - from wind and clouds, from fog and dark night.  Hynes explains the technical aspects of flying enough to give the reader an approximate understanding of maneuvers, without overwhelming us.  You can see, from his description of the training, why everyone can’t be a flier.  Not everyone can learn to fly in darkness, over land and sea, and roll a plane upside down and come out of it, which Hynes said at first felt like sheer suicide. 

This is a good memoir, not just for finding out what life was like for fliers in the Pacific, but to glimpse the war from their viewpoint - more as a necessary evil, something that got them in the air and gave them something to fly for.  

Click here to see the book in our catalog.

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

If you’re looking for a story with characters who happen to live in a time of war and who take the circumstances as they come, trying to make the best of it, I would recommend this 1950 book by Nevil Shute, which was voted a place on the BBC’s 2003’s list of “the nation’s 100 best-loved novels”. Although the heroine is British and her story concerns British colonialism in the Asian country of Malaysia, the hero is Australian and his life in the wilds of Australia can be likened to our own history of pioneer settlement.

Shute writes in a detailed quiet fashion, using as his principal narrator an interested observer, lawyer Noel Strachan. This device helps support the narrative by giving us the interest of Noel, the older man, hearing of the heroine Jean Piaget’s experiences as a Japanese prisoner in Malaysia, and of her meeting with the Australian rancher Joe Harmon, also a prisoner.

The amount of brutality in the book appears less in comparison to narratives of current crime fiction, or compared to stories of rape and murder in Darfur. However, Shute based his novel on true experiences of women and men who were Japanese prisoners in World War II. While the brutality may have been less horrific, more than 16,000 men died building the Burma railway for the Japanese, through sickness and exhaustion and malnutrition. And the experience of the women prisoners in the novel also happened, although in Sumatra, not Malaysia. Shute shows their suffering and how they died quietly one by one.

The love story is a good one, with their meeting by chance, then slowly making their way back to each other. Just when one obstacle is dealt with, another comes along to keep things interesting. The book presents the racial setting of Australia as it was in 1950, with native people considered as being below the white settlers. Interestingly enough, Jean notices a rancher married to a native woman, sees his intelligent face and wonders at his choice. But she herself is in love with Joe, a rancher who has had no real education and whose family emigrated to Australia out of the slums of London.

In the end, it is Shute’s essential humanity that resonates in his fiction and keeps your interest, even when the characters have the prejudices of an earlier era. That’s how he keeps them alive. When they come to a crossroads, they do everything they can – like when Joe sees Jean being beaten, and when Jean sees the world pushing Joe away from her. We want them to act, and we also want to act as they do, knowing our limitations but still risking everything for the things that count.

Foyle’s War (British TV Series) Starring Michael Kitchen

This award-winning series by Greenlit Productions (now part of Target Entertainment) was first shown in England in 2002, and aired in the United States in 2003 via PBS Masterpiece Theater. Created and written by Anthony Horowitz, the series is recognized for its exceptional acting and adept screenplays of plots based on real events that took place during World War II in England.

The episodes are mystery stories, with at least 2 or 3 different plots intersecting each other through different relationships and through circumstances of time and place. The chief place in the series is Hastings, a seaside town that saw a lot of action in the war because of being located right across from the European continent.

The main character is Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, played by Michael Kitchen. Honeysuckle Weeks is his driver, played by Samantha Stewart, who is eager and thoughtful at the same time, and is just as riveting a character as Foyle’s Detective Sergeant Paul Milner, played by Anthony Howell. Milner lost his foot early on in the war, and is out of the fighting. He becomes a very capable police detective, thanks to Foyle’s careful nurturing of Milner’s talents.

What you appreciate the most is how Kitchen plays Foyle’s quiet and determined character - showing hesitation when dealt an unexpected card, yet capable of cutting to the quick in almost any situation. While reticent, Foyle is at the same time keenly aware of what feelings are being expressed. It is gratifying, in these egocentric times, to note his humility and restraint - retiring silently while a drama is played out, as when a ruined man takes his own life rather than be hanged for his crime.

While the mysteries and whodunit aspect of the series make for entertaining speculation, what impresses the viewer is how grim wartime actually was – and how it took its toll on families and futures and shook up people's ideas of what was what. Women’s roles in society were broadened by doing the work of the absent men, but they had to live with a lower rate of pay and had to keep the home fires burning - waiting perhaps four years for their loved ones to return.

Whether you care about World War II or not, the series’ acting and smooth dialogue will rope you in and make you a fan. Anthony Horowitz, the show’s creator, regretted not including a narrative explanation about the history of each story, since he spent so much time digging them up. But I believe anyone who watches the series can’t help but appreciate the depth and wisdom that Horowitz has translated into these stories, even without any historical annotation.

(The only thing I do miss is subtitles, since as a Yank those clipped English syllables can fly right by me. Luckily, there’s always the reverse button.)

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit / by Sloan Wilson

In post-World War II America, Tom Rath is just another New York City businessman. His life revolves his job to which he commutes by train every morning, his wife Betsy and their three young children. As modest middle-class Americans, Tom and his family are just trying to make ends meet. So when an offer for a riskier but higher paying job comes his way, he takes it. The gamble pays off. Before long Tom catches the eye of his new boss Ralph Hopkins who wishes him to be his personal assistant, a prestigious but far more rigorous position meaning Tom will now have to choose between becoming a workaholic businessman or be just another 9-to-5-er who at least has time for his family. As he mulls his options, his homelife becomes more complicated. His only living relative, a grandmother, has died and left her estate home to Tom who now has to decide if he and his family should live on the property or accept the offer to sell the land as a potential housing project.

There's something else too. Even ten years later, the war is never far from Tom's thoughts. On his way to and from work, he reminisces about his harrowing combat experience as an Army paratrooper, the violence involved in killing enemy soldiers at close range and the loss of his best friend (partly of his own error). There's also a girl he knew in Rome, an Italian refugee named Maria, whom he'd had an affair with while on leave. When by chance he meets an old Army buddy and learns that Maria gave birth to his son after he left Italy, he must decide between keeping the love child a secret, hoping he can somehow forget about it, or letting his wife know and hope she'll understand. For Tom Rath, just another man on the street in a gray flannel suit, it seems like the entire world is held in the balance.

Penned in 1955, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is the quintissential 1950's story, one which entails the baby boom of the post war years, the suburbanization of American families, expanding American enterprise and the still lingering after effects of the war itself. Rath is a great character (Gregory Peck as Tom in the 1956 film version gave a sound performance). A man of admirable qualities, he's also plagued by many problems. Reading about Tom, the time and place he inhabits and the life which pulls him in so many different directions, creates intrigue about every aspect of the book right down to the peculiarly sad life of mega-mogul Ralph Hopkins. Here we see an individual feeling the grind of the corporate sinkhole, the decentralization of home and work, the burden of an ambitious wife and, not to be sold short, the first real problems confronting American veterans in quite some time. The book is a solid snapshot of an American decade more associated with conformity and standardization than indecision and uncertainty. Touching on the kind of America Updike would depict a decade later, it is one which brilliantly concentrates all of the trials and inadequacies, the ambiguity and suspicion inherent in post-war life into one identifiable character and condition. (FIC WILSON)

To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield

The title of this book got my attention. It has a romantic ring to it, and giving it more emotional impetus is the picture on the front of the small boys at play, with a teacher looking on intently, giving his undivided attention. R.F. Delderfield wrote many books, starting after World War I. He was committed to writing 4,000 words a day when he died in 1972, of lung cancer, at age 60.

The critics have tended to give him a go-by throughout his career, as a good “craftsman” and “storyteller” but not much more than that. One critic spoke of Delderfield’s stories as a kind of fantasy, stories that are too good to be true.

“To Serve Them All My Days” is the story of a young Welshman who returns “shell-shocked” from three years of serving in World War I - he was literally hit by a shell that buried him alive and killed all the other soldiers around him. A wise doctor in England sends him to Devon to apply for a teaching job, to have the benefit of the upland air and quietude. The Welshman, David Powlett-Jones, feels himself a poor candidate for the job, in light of his shattered nerves and raw vulnerability. But the headmaster has seen his ex-charges go off and fill the trenches, and then fill the casualty lists, so he has a natural sympathy for Powlett-Jones’ situation. Instead of pretending not to notice David’s shaking hands, he shows him the photos of those other boys who saw conflict so early in life, and didn’t come back. In true British form, the headmaster doesn’t dwell on it, and eagerly flings the window open (to give David a minute to control his emotion), quizzing the students below who are filing back from a cricket match. All is camaraderie, and common sense, and caring. This is where Powlett-Jones has come to rest, and this is where he will mend and rise to fight again, but in a better cause, perhaps.

Delderfield has a good feeling for pace, and for personalities. But he mostly keeps our interest by having Powlett-Jones follow his intuition, based on sympathy, to crack the difficult “nuts” - as those students present themselves. He does make a lot out of class and what people are brought up to, so that his critics can argue that a lot of his assumptions don’t apply any more. Does anyone know what a gentleman is these days, or what the heart of a father entails? At best, Delderfield is passionate on these topics, and if their elucidation are all the laurels he can rest on, people may keep reading him for some time to come.

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky

(This book has been reviewed by Dan in January 2010, but I'd like to add my impression of the work.)
Ms. Némirovsky, of Russian Jewish descent, grew up in Russia, but her family fled Russia during the Revolution and finally settled in France when she was 16 years old. She became a successful writer, but met an untimely end when the French government under the Nazis deported her to Auschwitz, where she died at age thirty-nine. This book has two parts, which Ms. Némirovsky wrote in the last two years of her life, chronicling the German occupation of France during World War II. From her notes, it appears that this was to be a 5 part work. Her two daughters held the manuscript for 64 years, believing it to be a sort of diary. The story was only found when one of the sisters made arrangements to donate the pages to an organization collecting writings of holocaust victims.

The first part deals with the initial days of France’s defeat at the hands of Germany, and the rush of citizens out of Paris to escape the approaching army. The writer follows more than one family’s saga, ranging from a simple middle class couple to a wealthy writer with his mistress. Some behave badly, even brutally, while others are more magnanimous. The second part of the book takes place in an occupied French village. The upper middle classes, the gentry, the farmers and the middle class are portrayed in riveting detail. Ms. Némirovsky shows our weakness for self-aggrandizement, and what our instincts for survival could translate into when occupied by a foreign army. This book is celebrated for its incisive exploration into Vichy France, a part of French history that for years was kept under wraps because of its unsavory aspects.

However, it’s interesting that Ms. Némirovsky is such an enlightened narrator of class and custom, when she herself was a Jew of a particular stamp, asking the Vichy government to be exempt from Jewish restrictions. After her arrest, her husband notes particularly to the authorities how his wife never defended the Jewish race. Critics have noted anti-Semitic elements in her previous writing, and in Suite Française’s village, there are no Jews at all. Suite Française shows us a German army of blonde, ruddy youths, respectful to the village inhabitants, singing stirring anthems while drilling. The reason they are there, as conquerors, is not altogether clear. From this grounds-eye view, there are only the victors and the vanquished, and the side that you happen to be on seems to be grounded in circumstance, not by any choice of your own. One wonders if the writer would have retained this vision if she had come back alive from Auschwitz.

Blackout by Connie Willis

If you don’t read science fiction as a rule, Connie Willis is still a wonderful writer to read. Although travelling in time plays an important part in Blackout, the rest of what happens to her characters is very much what happens to all of us, except for happening to be in London when it was bombed during World War II. So this book reads more as an historical novel than a science fiction work, at least from my viewpoint. Connie Willis believes in the ability to laugh at ourselves. She creates characters whose idiosyncrasies make us want to laugh and cry or tear our hair out, but as they get closer and closer to mortal peril, we find we just can’t disassociate ourselves from their dilemma, knowing them so well.

In Blackout, three historians have gone back from 2060 to World War II, one to observe Londoners during the bombing by the Nazis, one to observe the children evacuated out to the countryside, and one to mingle with the small fisherman who set out to rescue British soldiers from Dunkirk, France. The science of time travel has evolved around set parameters, one being that no one can travel to where they will affect the course of history. But they can get close to the main events, and then have to grapple with wanting to warn people or deflect them from catastrophe.

An earlier story of Willis’ and her book Doomsday incorporated time travel, so readers of those works will be familiar with the problems it presents. But from the start of Blackout, there are intimations that something is wrong. The research center, located in Oxford University in England, is running off-schedule, changing historian’s travel times without warning. The head of the center is off travelling or just unavailable. When the three historians, back in time, try to make contact with the present day, the portal refuses to open. Willis shows us the panic growing in each of them about their predicament, and how they are also subject to the anxiety, fear and terror of living in a time of war.

Note: this is the first part of a two part novel, the second part, All Clear, just now being released.

Catch-22: A Novel / by Joseph Heller

For readers accustomed to novels possessing a linear structure and straightforward narrative, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 may seem an incoherent, jumbled series of confusing characters and disconnected episodes. Many critics said as much upon its publication in 1961. But to the more enlightened audience, the novel is nothing short of a literary masterpiece. Born in Brooklyn in 1923, Joseph Heller grew up the only child of Russian immigrants. In 1941 at the age of 19, he joined the Army Air Corps as a bomber pilot in training and subsequently flew over 60 combat missions in the European theater. Upon his return stateside, Heller worked as a copy editor while crafting his concept for the story which would become Catch-22. The satirical wartime novel chronicling the individual's place amid an erratic institutional bureaucracy swiftly became a classic and remains so today.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind . . . Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed. (p. 46)

Capt. John Yossarian is an American bomber pilot in the final months of World War II. Having already flown well over the designated 40 flying sorties, or missions required by the Army, Yossarian is nonetheless kept around on active duty by his seemingly idiotic superior officers who see to it that the quota number of sorties are repeatedly raised. It's not just the number of combat missions. The entire squadron is certifiably crazy, it seems to Yossarian, who finds common sense and logic nominally absent from the base's operational system, the entire chain of command appearing to function with a misplaced agenda.

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It all seems a big muddle from the outside looking in. But is it? Though everyone and everything seems ludicrous to a T, bent on insanity and lunacy, the self-perception within the squadron isn't so drastic. Visibly, the atmosphere is relatively docile with the men seeming to accept the way things are. The absurdity of incidents like a captain promoted to major simply because his last name is "Major" (so he could be called "Major Major"), a discharged private who's continually given the most important duties, a colonel's reason for action based solely on what others think of him, or the company mess officer orchestrating the bombing of his own men are accepted as perfectly permissible activities or otherwise inconsequential dealings. What really matters, it seems, isn't quite what really matters.

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More than anything else, Catch-22 embodies its title phrase--the self-contradictory, circular reasoning evoking a no-win situation. The structure and style of the novel itself are like this, the prose always repetitive and paradoxical, reiterating themes of irrationality and nonsensical logic all purported as sound doctrine and ingenuity. Yet it's this seemingly ridiculous pattern of disjointed incoherency which makes the book so profound. For within the double-speak and literary hodgepodge is a deadly serious diatribe on war, peace, life and death, brilliantly illuminating the ordered chaos of military combat which inevitably subjects individuals to disorientation and futility. The 1970 film version (DVD CATCH) of the book starring Alan Arkin, John Voight and Orson Welles received lukewarm reviews but has garnered an appreciable fanbase and "cult" status in subsequent years. (FIC HELLER)

Suite Francaise / by Irene Nemirovsky

A Russian immigrant living in France at the time of World War II, Irène Némirovsky had fled the bolsheviks in her homeland only to be persecuted by another totalitarian regime when the Nazis invaded Paris. A Jew by birth, Nemirovsky and her husband were apprehended in 1942 and deported to Auschwitz where she died at 39. Her manuscript, written in barely readable script and largely unorganized within several notebooks, was preserved by her two surviving daughters where the uncompleted work gathered dust for 60 years. It wasn't until 2003 that Nemirovsky's notes were discovered compiled into a novel whereupon it quickly became a French sensation and international bestseller.

Némirovsky's original plan for her book consisted of five novella-sized stories intended to be organized into one volume. Only two were completed at the time of her capture. The first, "Storm in June," follows a gaggle of Parisians during the initial exodus from the German-occupied capital. The people, once residents now refugees in their own homeland, plod through the streets, across fields and further southward into the countryside in largely disorganized fashion. The once-proud nation is far from patriotic and anything but noble. Their slow migratory procession away from the metropolis is filled with constant bickering, quarrels and petty disputes arising from lives interrupted and revulsion at their country's swift, cowardly surrender. Social status meant little even as more aristocratic types persisted with their pretentious manners, always feeling entitled to preferential treatment, and often just downright mean and selfish.
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The second part describes a small village in 1940 where French girls, at a loss for other options, openly flirt with their German occupants who willingly reciprocate their affection. Though the situation incites fierce resentment among residents, little can be done it seems until a German officer is murdered, evidently done in by the patriotic indignation of one of the villagers. Certain the killer is a civilian harbored by the enemy, military police aggressively lay down the law, harshly infiltrating homes and individuals, exacting vicious tactics of coersion. The culminating outcome of the search which, in addition to rooting out the culprit, exposes several particularly passionate liasons between certain soldiers and mademoiselles, ultimately creating an inevitably paradoxical circumstance where war and love make strange bedfellows. Suite Francaise is a splendid "debut" novel by a genuinely gifted writer. Nemirovsky's first-hand account of a foreign occupation, written while it was taking place amid panic, confusion, chaos and conflict evokes an important and decidedly tumultuous time and place in history.

The Girls of Slender Means / by Muriel Spark

Award-winning Scottish novelist Muriel Spark (1918-2006) lived quite a globe-trotting life during her illustrious career as a writer, having her only child with her first husband in Zimbabwe, working for Allied Intelligence in London during WWII, and making a home in New York, Rome, Budapest and Israel prior to becoming a permanent resident of Tuscany by the time of her death. Her most well-known work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was well-received at its 1963 publication and continues to receive acclaim as a novel, a 1965 film starring Dame Maggie Smith and, most recently, an off-broadway play. Her short, poignant novella The Girls of Slender Means follows several young single women bonded together during London's post-war years.

In Britain in 1945, the severe economic strain means that the practices of rationing and partitioned work duties must continue for a time while the infrastructure, particularly in London, is collectively rebuilt. For this reason, establishments like "The May of Teck Club" have been founded to aid the cause, its primary purpose being to house women of a young age so that they could safely live and work in London apart from their families. The women of the May of Teck are concerned with the news that Nicholas Farringdon, an anarchist intellectual writer and inspirational friend known to all the girls as Nicky, has been suddenly killed in Haiti. As news about the death catches hold, reminisces about Nicky coincide with each girl's lives, loves and convictions.

Their current romances, past love affairs, ambitions and dreams are mutually conveyed as their daily routines are collectively imbued with demanding duties, meager salaries and longing for a better situation. This is one of Spark's most concise, well-written books; winningly realistic and consistently witty with rare, appealing characters from familiar circumstances. All readers may not catch on to Spark's style immediately. The narrative tends to jump around a bit and a takes some re-perusing to get the characters right, but its a story which seems to mesh well more as a collective, first-person plural narrative--a singular tone amidst multiple voices. Fans of Spark's other works are sure to enjoy this one. (FIC SPARK)