FLIGHTS OF PASSAGE : REFLECTIONS OF A WORLD WAR II AVIATOR

During the Second World War, the author was a young Marine bomber pilot. He flew more than a hundred missions against the Japanese at Okinawa and Ulithi. ( ... ) What he remembers best and describes so eloquently in this memoir are the sensations he experienced in his rites of passage from untrained Cadet to war - weary aviator, from youthful innocence to manhood.

( ... ) His lucid, deceptively simple style immediately engages the reader in his exploration of the mysteries of coming of age in wartime.

With humour and compassion, the author presents unforgettable portraits of his fellow aviators. Neither judgmental nor sentimental, his disciplined understatement communicates an acute sense of the spectacular madness of war - the exhilaration and tedium ; the admiration for a pilot's prowess, even when that pilot is an enemy ; the impenetrable absurdity of the death of friends. At the same time, he gives us a sense of the wondrous feeling of flying - that exquisite harmony which exists between a pilot and his machine aloft in the insubstantial air.

These images of a young aviator's war rank with the very best literature to come out of the Second World War.