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"This Was the System." At Annapolis, for reasons that no one recalls, Sherman acquired the nickname "Joe." But every classmate knows how young (17), undersized Plebe Sherman got an unfortunate reputation among upperclassmen. "Joe wasn't really cocky," said his roommate, "he just wasn't uncertain, as most kids that age are." Though many of his classmates had never seen a ship, the crew-cut kid with the square chin was a walking encyclopedia of Navy history, engagements and ships. In dining hall, when first classmen at his table fired questions at him, Sherman always knew the answers— and often in more detail than his seniors. "You're too smart; get under the table," he was ordered, and there he sat, without dinner, taking his hazing. The hazers, rougher than they are these days, sought him out in barracks. They made him stand for an hour at attention holding a heavy book extended in one hand. On cold nights, he was shoved under a cold shower and his bedding thrown in with him. "He never complained, even to me," said his roommate. "This was the system and this was the life he wanted for himself. So O.K."
Too light for football, Sherman made the fencing team, was pronounced by the Lucky Bag "supreme as a fusser [a genteel wolf] and yard reptile [a midshipman who squires the daughters of Annapolis captains and admirals]." He was also something of a teacher's pet. When a classmate asked a difficult question, the instructor would have Sherman stand up and reel off the answer. Sherman stood second in the wartime Class of 1918, which graduated a year ahead of its time. As the new ensign hurried off to war, the Lucky Bag summarized: "Forrest Percival has been the object of ridicule in some quarters and an envied example in others. He is our most convincing argument for the theory that 'brains is king.' "
Two Sails. Sherman remembers his chagrin when he saw his first ship—the Nashiille, an ancient cruiser that had fired the first shot in the Spanish-American War and steamed off to World War I with the help of two sails. Now, he likes to remember his tour in the Nashville as a personal link to the Navy's windjamming past. But staring into salt spray for periscopes did not fit Forrest Sherman's plans for long. He wanted to be a Navy aviator.
He became one of the Navy's best pilots; in 1932, he won the personal Navy E for dive bombing and fixed (i.e., fighter) gunnery. In his spare time, while other officers swapped scuttlebutt over wardroom coffee, Sherman read economics and world politics. He poured out scholarly articles for Navy publications, studded them with quotations from Napoleon, Lee and Moltke, ranged in subject from critiques on the 1918 air war in Palestine to suggestions for carrier design. Many of his contemporaries found his singleminded-ness irritating. But his superiors were delighted with a staff officer they could lean on; subordinates liked a man who always knew just what he wanted to do.