In Love and War is a war story. It is also a love story. When you’re young, even war must sometimes take a back seat to romance.
Ron Weyman joined the Royal Canadian Navy in the early days of World War II as a sub-lieutenant, RCNVR, and was sent to England on loan to the Royal Navy. He trained as an asdic specialist, then served out of Scapa Flow aboard HMT (His Majesty’s Trawler) Preston North End. Transferred to the destroyer HMS Achates, he witnessed the sinking of the battleship Hood and picked up some of the few survivors. When the Achates hit a mine en route to Murmansk and lost half her ship’s company, Weyman joined HMCS St. Croix on convoy escort duty in the North Atlantic, enduring some of the worst U-boat engagements of the war.
On D-Day, Weyman took a "floating radar palace" into the Normandy Beach "Omaha," directing allied aircraft over enemy positions. As captain of a Quebec-built LST he led Indian troops onto the beaches of Malaya and Burma to clean up after the Japanese invaders.
And in between, as sailors do – perhaps must – he enjoyed a tryst in a London fire-blitz, a romantic interlude in a Cornwall cottage, and a growing love for Ashy in Toronto.
Weyman’s memoir evokes the excitement of war and battle, the horrors of danger and loss. And it celebrates the optimism of youth and the healing powers of love.
In Love and War is illustrated with photographs and with some of Ron Weyman’s own paintings, several of which hang in the National War Museum.
