Sunday, June 03, 2007
FISK REELED IN
Robert Fisk tells of a French submarine sunk in 1941, with the loss of many lives:
The French embassy in Beirut regularly reminds divers that this is a war grave, but the Lebanese still swim inside the hull. The gentle Mediterranean tides rock the vessel from time to time, and the skeletons inside - still in the remnants of their uniforms - rock with it.
They do? After nearly 70 years in the sea? We might be looking at the latest Fiskian exaggeration. Here’s a 2001 interview with a diver who has examined the wreck 300 times:
"What happened to the bodies?” I ask innocently. “They are still there,’’ Walid replies, with a diver’s professional acceptance of death. “There are bones lying around, they’re pretty much covered with sand now, but it’s the crew ... It’s all there, just as it was, along with the crew. There are skeletons, some bones. I found an empty wallet there once and some plastic boots. No names.’’
That sounds a little more realistic. Click to reveal the identity of Fisk’s fact-checker.
UPDATE. In other Fisk news, he’s a double-generation deathbed dodger:
Edward Fisk was a cantankerous, tough, recalcitrant old man: my father William refused to visit him when he was dying - just as I later refused, foolishly, to visit Bill on his deathbed ...
What a very odd fellow.
UPDATE II. In other unusual British family news, Peter Hitchens reviews Christopher Hitchens.