Those of us who have never served in the armed forces know intellectually that teenagers have seen front-line duty in wars, but I’m never really been privileged to hear a veteran talk about the transition from high school student to warrior. In this incredibly accessible, funny, and poignant memoir, Sam Hynes does just that. Shipped off to aviator training right out of school in the middle of World War II, he is two men: a confident, often drunk young man and an officer charged with flying warplanes against the Japanese. His success is surviving both of those challenging worlds largely unscathed.

Hynes relives the ups and downs of military training along with the urgency and boredom of combat duty. He admits to a couple mistakes that, given a stricter commanding officer, could have prematurely ended his flying career. He contrasts his youthful illusions of being indestructable with the real deaths of his comrades. The genius of the account, however, is that he’s able to tell it in the voice of the 18- or 20-year-old he once was. Hynes successfully retells the tale as he experienced it as a young man, not as he might reflect on it as an old veteran.

It’s that voice that allows us to see the bravery and the bravado the pilot needs to enter into battle against unknown odds, confident in himself and his machine. Hynes is able to find in himself the young man who, in the midst of the Pacific war against the Japanese, could bomb enemy airstrips by day and steal Jeeps to go get drunk at night.

Though his is a war memoir, he brings life and gaity to his story. I’m not the sort of person who believes strongly dystopian stories because I think that, somewhere along the line, most people will learn how to have at least a little fun in their lives. Hynes and his fellow pilots certainly did, despite the dire circumstances that brought them together. That humanity shines throughout this memoir, making it much easier for me to understand the transition from teenager to warrior.