The Sailor's Homer

There are virtually no biographies of naval enlisted personnel, making Dennis L. Noble’s book wholly unique. Richard McKenna was an enlisted sailor for twenty-two years, from the late 1930s to the end of the Korean War. Like most of his shipmates, he was one of many “faceless” enlisted sailors. McKenna, who eventually became a writer, did not hide the fact that, like the proverbial sailor, he enjoyed going ashore to such colorful-sounding establishments in China as “Nagasaki Joe’s.” Nor did he h