Saturday, August 16, 2003

READ ABOUT KATIE

The apple of one man's eye goes to Iraq.
Their mission faced early turbulence. During a stop in the Azores Islands in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, Katie mysteriously vanished. A navigator arriving on another plane found Katie in a hangar, folded and defaced with vulgar graffiti.

"Not a very auspicious beginning," Arnold conceded.

Cleaned up and straightened out, Katie made it to a number of countries in the Persian Gulf, where she was the centerpiece of hundreds of photographs. Wearing her Air Devil's Inn hat, she was perched on a dismembered tank turret, in the cockpit of a wrecked plane and in the hold of the C-130. She eventually tagged along on more than 20 combat missions, qualifying her for a ribbon, Williams said.

Among the photographs is one showing the beaming blonde model holding two cardboard beers in the doorway of an Iraqi airport, just below an image of Saddam Hussein that had been obscured by a circle and slash.

The cardboard cutout was signed by dozens of soldiers from around the world, including a group of Lithuanian troops, who wrote a paragraph along Katie's midriff.

"I have no idea what it says," Williams said.

No comments: