Books: Modest Marine

BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP (384 pp.)—"Pappy" Boyingfon—Putnam ($4.50).

"If this story were to have a moral, then I would say: 'Just name a hero and I'll prove he's a bum.'"

In this long, rambling autobiography, one of World War II's authentic heroes does his best to prove that he was also a bum. Gregory ("Pappy") Boyington's saga begins in the summer of 1941, when he was a Marine officer and a flying instructor on the naval air base at Pensacola. He was, as usual, restless. "I was forever going somewhere but never getting anywhere. For the most part I was always leaving...