I was born in the summer of 1941, and my first memories of the world beyond my family have World War II as the backdrop. We crossed over from Manhattan and went down to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to see off my uncle Byng. He set sail in late 1944 on his tanker ship, a proud captain finally getting away from his shipbuilding duties to see some action. I felt left behind as this man I hardly knew patted me on the head, walked up the ramp onto his ship, and went away. I remember afterward a collage of incidents reflecting the anguish of my mother’s parents, who lived with us, when Byng’s ship blew up in the English Channel, torpedoed by an uninformed submarine the day after Germany surrendered. He was carrying a cargo of aviation gasoline, and no survivors or remains ever were found. Purse and Dunie, as my grandparents called each other, departed in disbelief for coastal England and France, looking in camps and hospitals, hoping desperately to find an amnesiac but living Byng. They continued their search for several years after the war amid the confusion of displaced persons. Dunie had a stroke and subsequently lost her mind, and Purse eventually gave up. Byng’s was an innocent death, preventable but for a trigger-happy hand behind a powerful weapon.
