`Avenger’ examines Bush during WWII

FLIGHT OF THE AVENGER: George Bush at War, by Joe Hyams, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 171 pages, $16.95.

It doesn’t take a combat veteran to order thousands of American troops into war, but it helps. As President George Bush signed the papers sending hundreds of pilots screaming over Baghdad, he often thought of his own nearly fatal experiences in the South Pacific a half-century ago.

It was during his senior year at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., that Bush first decided to enlist in the Navy. By his 20th birthday, he was flying the newly built Avenger torpedo bombers against the powerful Japanese Empire, taking off and landing on the rolling and pitching deck of the USS Jacinto.

In “Flight of the Avenger: George Bush at War,” Joe Hyams recounts Bush’s military career, illustrating how World War II helped mold the character of the president-to-be, and even how Bush helped shape the war.

Most of those who served during the war with Bush, then one of the country’s youngest pilots, remembered him as unfailingly polite, a practical joker who once set off an elephant stampede by buzzing circus grounds, and as a steely nerved pilot. As other pilots and sailors went carousing at port and exchanged photos of new girlfriends, Bush only talked about one — Barbara Pierce.

As many combat pilots will attest, it is coming face to face with the enemy that quickly tests a soldier’s mettle. While on a bombing run in September 1944, Bush was shot down over Chichi Jima. As black smoke billowed and spread throughout the plane, Bush continued his run before pulling away from the island, where no captured airman was known to escape alive. Indeed, most were tortured and a few were even eaten.

Two members of his crew were killed in the crash, and Bush floated in a raft for three hours as the USS Finback, a patrolling submarine, raced with would-be captors to get to him.

The month Bush spent on the submarine helped to gel his beliefs and goals: family, religion and the principles instilled by his upbringing, which, though privileged, was devoted to public service.

“As you grow older and try to retrace the steps that made you the person that you are, the signposts to look for are those special times of insight,” Bush told Hyams. “I remember my days and nights aboard the Finback as one of those times — maybe the most important of them all.”

For the most part, Hyams’ book is a positive account of Bush’s life at war and his storybook upbringing. Drawing on a number of sources — old U.S. and Japanese records, war buddies and even the president and Mrs. Bush — Hyams tells of how Bush was eager to enlist not only as a way of serving his country, but also of setting out on his own.

“I wanted to get out from under that powerful shadow,” Bush says of his father, a successful businessman who later served in the U.S. Senate.

Maine also is often featured in the account. Bush’s parents were wed in St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport, a brother was born there, and the family enjoyed many a summer at Walker’s Point, even as war was brewing.

In fact, because of Bush’s easy-going manner, his Navy buddies didn’t know the extent of his wealth until they visited the oceanside compound. And, after marrying Barbara during a brief shore leave, the Bushes lived briefly in Auburn.

At fewer than 200 pages, “Avenger” is a quick read, and though a little sappy at times, it deals with an interesting subject. After all, the last eight American presidents served in World War II, and the war has had an inevitable impression upon U.S. foreign policy. But Hyams’ book is more than that — it’s a story of a man who could have taken an easier road, but decided not to.

John Ripley is a reporter on the NEWS city desk.