IN FOREIGN Affairs-speak, 15 minutes out of the schedule is a “freshen-up opportunity”. President Mary McAleese had just two of them on a 10-hour tour of Irish Army posts in south Lebanon, beginning at 8am on Saturday.
Wearing a light brown trouser suit, flat shoes and Ray-Bans, she climbed on and off helicopters, inspected lengthy guards of honour, pinned medals on soldiers, spoke fluent Spanish to the Unifil head of mission, Maj Gen Alberto Asarta Cuevas, and planted a tree. She chatted with solemn civic and religious representatives, made several speeches, laid a wreath, and stood for long, poignant moments, shoulders back, under the Tricolour at the beautiful Irish Unifil memorial high over Tibnin, while an officer read the roll of honour to a soft lament by an Army piper.
She hunkered down on floor cushions with little girls in Tibnin orphanage after a group of them, in headscarves and green, white and orange costumes, sang the Irish national anthem – as Gaeilge, and then watched Pte Michelle Tarpey giving an English lesson. Among those waiting to greet her in the orphanage was a young woman who was a resident when the President first visited 14 years ago. Fatima Al Zein has since become a university graduate.
Then after another helicopter ride to UN Post 6-50, on the so-called Blue Line – the point to which the Israelis retreated, marked by blue-painted tar barrels – the President climbed a rather challenging ladder to an observation tower and chatted to post commander Gemma Fagan about life in a minefield (literally), across the fence from an Israeli position.
“Every morning they sweep the sand on the Blue Line to check there are no footprints,” said the commander. There are no friendly waves to the opposite tower. “They don’t bother us, we don’t bother them.”
Behind the pristine blue berets, cravats and gleaming boots, there are loneliness and excitement, Skype and texts, and a longing for home as the near six-month tour comes to an end. Pte James Dunne (22) became father to a baby boy five days into his tour. Gunner Nigel Graham (28), one of three serving brothers from Columb Barracks, Mullingar, says it gets harder as the children get older. He has a four-year-old daughter and a baby due on November 6th, which he hopes will be a late arrival and ensure he’ll be home on time. Cpl Linda Gruddy (32), now on her fourth trip, has a daughter (8) at home.
“The hardest part is the day you leave . . . and leaving this time was harder because she’s that bit older.” Her brother, Pte John Gruddy, has just got engaged. “The reality of Army life is dawning on her now,” he says wryly. But nothing compares to this, says Lieut Eoin Rochford, on his first tour. “A lot of my friends would be travelling away for a year in Asia maybe, but . . . this is such a brilliant experience”.
Meanwhile, the President is moving on, chatting, listening. Mercifully, said a senior officer, the day was comparatively cool.
“Now if she’d been here yesterday . . . it was unbearable.”
After a 35-minute helicopter ride back to Beirut, she had a couple of hours to gather herself and dress for a dinner hosted by Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati, entailing another guard of honour inspection, a private meeting with Mikati, another with delegations and another speech.
By the finish, just after 10 pm, she had been on the move for more than 14 hours.
Yesterday before boarding the government jet, her last duty as President on a foreign trip involved a meeting with Irish honorary consuls before attending a reception hosted by Ambassador Isolde Moylan. It marked the end of three intense working days before a dinner at the presidential palace hosted by the Lebanese president Michael Sleiman.
Under the hot Lebanese sun in Camp Shamrock, we asked if she would miss all this. “Oh yes. I will really miss people. I will . . . have to find some way of making sure that I have as busy a life after I leave.” Will she miss the sirens, the motorcades, the interminable protocol? “I tend not to notice that any more . . . It is just a way of getting to places.” And did she have any advice for the new president? “Make sure the chair that you get at your desk is really comfortable and fits you. I spent 14 years trying to get one . . . so I wish them good luck at that . . . I never found one.”
It was a classic “no comment” from a president who has defied expectations throughout her 14-year term of office. The fact that she has taken her titular commander-in-chief role seriously enough to bookend her term in office with visits to Lebanon has ensured a special place for her in soldiers’ affections. In 1997, the trip to what was then a war zone, just a few weeks into her presidency, was perceived as a huge PR coup for everyone involved. It was also a natural fit for her, she explained.
“Having a brother in the Irish Army as I had had given me a particular insight maybe into the important role the Army plays and how when they are abroad, the sacrifices that are made at home by families . . . I know how long it takes to get peace, to make peace and to hold the peace. I had a fair idea just how much commitment it takes here in a place like Lebanon to secure stability. I thought it was important to draw attention to that, to this quiet work that goes on every day here. There are thousands of troops here from all over the world who are maintaining and stabilising peace in this region.”