In Love and War: A Memoir

William Glassman is a professor of psychology at Ryerson Polytechnical
University.

If old men do not forget, their memories are certainly liable to
distortion. Weyman’s memoir belongs in that category of rose-colored
recollections of the way he would have liked things to have been.

In January 1942, Weyman attended the first navigation specialist course
at Halifax with the late Hal Lawrence. According to Weyman, the course
was “somewhat different from the active world of the navy, in which on
one occasion, Hal jumped from his corvette to the deck of a surfaced
U-boat.” In reality, the course was intended to prepare selected
volunteer reserve officers for command at sea. Of the 21 officers who
finished the course within six months, seven assumed commands of
minesweepers or larger vessels; three went on to command Fairmiles, and
three more became executive officers in line for their own commands.
Weyman, one of three to fail the course, went to a destroyer, where he
could be watched by both a captain and an executive officer.
Lawrence’s DSC-winning leap to a submarine occurred four months after
the course.

As a naval record, this book falls far short; in fact, Weyman’s
wartime naval service mainly provides the backdrop for his wartime
sexual adventures. The 11 reproductions of Weyman’s war art may be of
interest.