Also, in Incirlik, we drove into nearby Adana and surveyed the damage from the Scud attacks. The hit on the apartment house was bad enough, but the damage there had been to one side and had been contained. The hit on the hospital had been dead center, and what hadn’t been destroyed by the explosion had burned to the ground. There were hundreds of dead, and a pile of rubble reminiscent of 9-11. I symbolically helped shovel some debris for the cameras, and then presented the director of the hospital a check for $1 million from the Buckman Foundation, along with a promise that America would also be offering assistance. Then I looked straight at the cameras and told everyone listening to send money directly to the Buckman Foundation, along with a note saying it was for the hospital, and I would match the contributions. That got me kissed on the cheeks by every damn Turk in the country!
From Turkey, I was flying to Kurdistan, and that is where things got interesting. For one thing, Erbil was the only place we could fly into. Kirkuk had an airport but had been totally trashed by the Iraqis. Erbil was the place to go anyway, since it had served as our airhead in the region, and was the Army’s forward operating base. Unfortunately, Erbil was somewhat backward as to facilities. There was no way we were flying the white whale of Air Force One, a Boeing 747, into Erbil! Instead they had cleaned up a C-130 and rigged it for people transport, with a shitload of web seats. I had long experience with that in the old days; they weren’t all that comfortable, but the flight was only about an hour long. Neither of the regular Air Force One pilots was current on his C-130 rating, so I would be chauffeured around by the wing commander, a full colonel, with a major as the co-pilot, and my regular pilot kibitzing from the navigator’s seat.
The only argument Marilyn and I had on the entire trip had been when I told her that she needed to stay in Turkey while I traveled on to Kurdistan. “I’ll be back in a few days. Try not to get in any trouble while I’m away.” I figured we could get her a few photo ops doing something humanitarian.
“Excuse me? Since when do you go and I don’t?” she asked. “I’m going, too!”
Now it was my turn to look horrified. “No you aren’t! It’s a war zone!”
“There’s a cease fire, remember? The war’s over. I’m going!”
I looked at the others for some assistance, but everybody in the room had decided to look somewhere else. Cowards all! “Marilyn!” I replied, exasperatedly.
“Get over it!” she told me.
“Aaaaggh! So be it! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” I threw my hands up in disgusted surrender. We cancelled the photo op plans and Marilyn would travel with me.
The day we were to fly out of Incirlik, the dress code was what I called ‘combat safari casual.’ For me that meant khakis, a denim shirt, a Desert Camouflage Uniform jacket with the proper patches sewn on, and some jump boots. It was comfortable and practical; there has never been a neat and clean C-130, and a suit and wingtips would get messed up. Marilyn wore a long denim skirt and a linen blouse, and a khaki jacket, though with fairly average hiking shoes. She was also wearing a head scarf, which she had worn in all the Muslim countries we had visited. No use pissing off the locals. I simply wore an old and comfortable slouch brim fedora.
The reporters were all wearing safari jackets with tons of pockets and epaulets, most of which looked brand new and still had the pockets starched shut. All they were missing were the pith helmets and riding crops.
Actually Marilyn’s head scarves made for nice gifts from the locals to us. The President is always getting loads of gifts from foreign leaders, and I was no different. The important thing to remember is that they belong to the President, not to whoever holds the office. As a general rule I was not allowed to keep them. I couldn’t turn them down, however, since that would be an insult to whoever gave them to me, so almost everything goes to the National Archives. However, I am allowed to keep a few small odds and ends, generally for no more than a few hundred dollars in value, though they need to be itemized and are considered income for tax purposes, so I have to pay income tax on them.
So, if I visit Uganda, and receive a tribal chieftain’s mask and spears, they have to figure the value. Under $350, I can keep them (but I won’t since I have zero use for a mask and spears.) More than that, they go to the National Archives, unless I want to pay for them out of my own pocket. The scarves she received were generally quite lovely, hand woven and dyed, in silk, and in several cases Marilyn would take the gift and wear it to dinner that evening with our hosts. That certainly earned some personal good will.
We ended up in a waiting room with everybody who was traveling to Erbil. A Hercules could carry about 90 passengers, and I wondered if a single C-130 would be sufficient. About half the plane would be filled with my staff and traveling party, and the rest would be reporters. I was assured that quite a few were already on the ground in Erbil and would be set up to film my arrival. Every one of those waiting was praying that my plane would be shot down by the Iraqis on final approach, so they could get a good picture of it. In the meantime, I simply chatted with a few of the reporters — off camera and off the record! — while we waited. I mentioned to somebody that it had been over twenty years since I had ridden a Herky-Bird, and I wondered if they were any more comfortable than before.
At that point, somebody asked, “Mrs. Buckman, have you ever parachuted, like your husband?”
I snorted out a laugh, and Marilyn answered, “No, I’m not that crazy! That would be my husband. That’s too dangerous for me!” I laughed again at that.
Fletcher Donaldson, who was along for the trip, then asked, “Mister President, is it that dangerous? Has anything ever happened when you were parachuting?”
It was a perfect opportunity to set up Fletcher. I nodded slowly, and answered, “Well, we don’t really talk about that sort of thing, but yes, it’s happened, I had a really bad jump once, in fact.”
He was scribbling furiously on a pad. “What happened?”
“Well, first, after I jumped, my static line tore, so my chute wouldn’t deploy. We were only a few thousand feet up, and the static line pulls the chute from the pack, so I had to pull the chute out by hand! Only that didn’t work; the chute got all tangled up and wouldn’t open properly, so I had to cut it loose. By now, I was barely a thousand feet off the ground, so I had to pull my reserve chute, and that deployed, but as I looked up, I saw that it had torn apart, right down the middle! I was only about five hundred feet up now, and it was really looking bad.”
I waited long enough until he asked, “So? What’d you do next!?”
I smiled and gave him a funny look. “That’s easy, Fletcher. I died! What do you think happens when you jump out of a plane without a working parachute?”
Around the room the groans were loud and long, although most of the military people were grinning. They had all heard some variation of this at some time or the other, as had Marilyn.
“Nothing personal, Mister President, but it’s not nice to tease somebody whose company buys ink by the barrel!” he told me.