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Last updated on August 5th, 2017 at 01:55 pm
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.