“Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

His name in the files of the dead and/or missing at sea read like this:

William Devine

Rank/Rate. Torpedoman’s Mate, Second Class Service Number 668 71 41

Birth Date January 25, 1922

From East Saint Louis, Illinois

Decorations: Purple Heart

Submarine USS Capelin (SS-289)

Lost date: December 2, 1943

Location: Off Celebes possibly off Kaoe Bay

Lost at sea, cause unknown

William was born in St. Louis, Missouri.

Yes, he was, and he was my beloved cousin Billy, dancer, guitarist and singer, and this Memorial Day is the first time, I think, I’ve had the opportunity to write about him.

He was the son of my father’s younger brother, and, with his family, lived across the Mississippi River from us. In the late summer when the rains had stopped, the great river sank to a muddy sliver as it passed St. Louis, and some of my friends and I would scale down the rocks to the edge of it, and on weekends he would be standing on the muddy Illinois shore waving to us.

“That’s my cousin Billy!” I’d shout. “He plays the guitar and runs the picture show at the movies,” I’d shout at the box cars and wave at the jobless men riding on top of it. I knew little of their plight then, but I was proud because none of my friends knew anybody who could play the guitar and got to watch movies for free.

I sure did. In the late ’30s, my Uncle Peter would take the St. Louis Devines on the old ferry across the river to go fishing and have a cookout on the river banks. In the early afternoon before the “skeeters” came after us, Billy would bring out his guitar and we’d all sing the sun down.

Those were the last of the “good old days,” and when “good” ended another era came as the strike on Pearl Harbor darkened the skies around the future.

In short order, my five brothers had gone to boot camp or straight to the Pacific, and one night in a Hawaiian bar, full of late teenage boys, fate brought them all together before the Pacific was tainted with blood.

My oldest brother Matt, who had left home first and joined up at 16 and survived Pearl Harbor, bought drinks for all of them, brothers and cousins, pulled out of high school with skin as clean and pale as the sky over Diamond Head.

Then, as fate would have it, into the bar sauntered a young brown-haired blue-eyed submariner, Billy Devine, the guitar-playing cousin from across the river.

It was as if God himself had set the table for a last party for the Family Devine.

My brothers, who all saw friends die in front of them, sailed the Pacific from one deadly battle to another.

Luckily, or perhaps due to the prayers muted each night, they all came home. Memorial Day is the day when we take flowers to their graves. It’s a day for the dead, and my sweet guitar-plucking, blue-eyed cousin is among them.

I think these days of those closest to me, five sailors, sons of a sailor, who came home to pull the soaked handkerchief from my mother’s eye. But Billy’s mother was not so blessed.

They never found the USS Capelin (SS-289), lost on Dec. 2, 1943, somewhere at the bottom of Kaoe Bay forever and listed as lost at sea, cause unknown. There is, however, a monument near Manila that honors the lost crew of the Capelin and the incredible number of others like it.

Speak with me this morning for those you lost in that war and others like it, echoing the words of Robert Louis Stevenson. I remember them well, because a Navy chaplain spoke them over my father, Lt. Cmdr. Mathias Devine as they laid him to rest and I, at 10 years of age, watched.

“Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.”

Amen.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.