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A Good Story, Badly Told

© Andrew Willis

Every so often a good story comes out, and the small things just kill it. Sailors to the End, by Gregory Freeman, is just such a story.

Every sailor knows about the fire on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal. We all have to watch the movie before damage control classes begin in boot camp. I had to watch it fifteen years ago; the newbies have to watch it still. I even had a copy of it while I was an instructor in Newport. It's a story of courage and determination, as the movie says--a fight for life. An honest account will also display the errors that led to the disaster, as well as the ones made during and after.

Sailors to the End does that. Freeman tells the story with a journalist's flair for the well-turned phrase, and a short, to-the-point style that is the signature of the newspaperman. Easy to read and easy to follow from personality profile to accident to aftermath, Freeman has captured the events in a manner that every layman should be able to follow.

The other strength of Sailors to the End is its detail--sometimes gruesome, always descriptive. Two examples that come to mind are a sailor who gets torn up by shrapnel flying on the flight deck in the wake of an exploding bomb, and the trapped men in after steering, valiantly doing their duty to save their ship and shipmates, knowing that they are going to die. The realism with which Freeman describes the events and the suspense he skillfully conveys bring life to a well-known story.

The problem with the book, however, isn't its style, or the facts it presents about the fire. Rather, it's the little things. The things a journalist who diligently pursued his fact-checking would have found. Freeman makes basic errors in Naval terminology, career paths, spelling and usage. For example, Lieutenant Commanders are officers, but he mentions that the Chief Engineer of the Forrestal is enlisted. These are errors that no sailor, or most people associated with the Navy, would have made. You'd think that someone in the publishing industry would know that.

Unfortunately, the errors detract from what is otherwise a good book, at least if you know anything about the Navy or the incident beforehand. And people wonder why the military doesn't feel connected to the rest of the country we protect.