Rwanda Double Enders

On the late afternoon of Thursday 22 September 1994, while at work at his day job with Ontario Hydro in Mississauga, Roberts received a phone call from public affairs at the army headquarters in Ontario, Land Force Central Area (LFCA), and told to report to Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Toronto. He was instructed to draw $3,600 cash, and go to specific travel agent and use the cash to pay for two round trip tickets via KLM Airline to Nairobi leaving the following Monday. Headquarters said, come to the Commissionaires' Desk to pickup your travel claims, and get a video camera! Because he could not get one from Ottawa, he arranged to borrow a $60,000 Betacam SP broadcast camera from Sony Canada, including a tripod. Finally HQ said, "We will be in-touch to update you as to what is to happen next".

To keep costs down and because of short turn around, Roberts provided some of his own broadcast equipment such as a handheld microphone, lavalier microphones (clip-on), video and power cables, a battery powered television monitor, and two flexifill light reflectors. They are used to bounce ambient light onto the upper torso of the interviewee.

Prior to the deploying Roberts spoke to their contact on the ground in Rwanda via a satellite phone. He was told that where the Field Ambulance was located, things were stable, adding, "You don't need a helmet, a flack jacket, or a gun". Flying in a commercial airliner, even before 9/11, taking a gun in your luggage overseas would have generated unnecessary paperwork. Ironically, it appears that Cpl Frank Vilaca and Roberts were the only unarmed Class "B" Canadian reserve soldiers deployed to Rwanda.

They were deployed on only four days notice, from their day jobs for two weeks to generate proactive and positive media coverage of the Canadian Forces in a war zone. As reserve soldiers they brought a group of skill sets not available within the regular force. Afterwards, Roberts was told by a uniformed bureaucrat at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, that because Cpl Frank Vilaca was infantry and not air force, he was not qualified to be a military video camera operator. Regardless of the fact that Vilaca worked at CHEX-TV in Peterborough, Ontario as a news camera operator. Generating this type of media coverage from remote and or dangerous locations was a first for the Canadian Forces. Despite this, neither Roberts or Vilaca, received any official recognition for the job they had done. Later, Roberts received a call from a regular force public affairs officer in Ottawa asking how the "double-ender" interviews were orchestrated, and where to buy the box of electronics that interfaces between the Betacam SP camera system and a satellite phone. When this person was told that the Outlander Patch was built in Ottawa he could not see the humour in the coincidence.

But back to the chase. On the leg of the trip from Amsterdam to Nairobi, a flight attendant handed Roberts a note saying that he and Vilaca had reservations at Nairobi Hilton. The aircraft's flight plan took the KLM 747-400 passed the island of Crete, were Roberts' father Geoffrey, a British soldier, had fought and had been captured by the Germans just over 52 years before. His father spent four years as a prisoner-of-war. At one point after escaping from a POW camp, he was captured by the Gestapo and held at Pancratz prison in Prague for several months. During his interrogation he was almost beaten to death and required surgery on his face after the war to repair the damage done. Most mornings, he and the several other British soldiers who were also being held, were woken by the sound of people being shot by the firing squads. Because the situation in Rwanda was in such a state of flux, Roberts spent for than a few minutes contemplating his and Vilaca's future as he stared down at Crete through the haze from 33,000 feet.

At approximately 9:30pm the flight stopped at Kilimanjaro, Tanzania to drop off tourists. In the pitch black the KLM flight made a right hand turn, through a passenger window in the only visible artificial lights were two rows of runway lights on either side of the single runway. There were no other landing lights marking the being of the runway. The 747 made a spine crunching landing and the majority of the overhead storage compartments popped open. The half-an-hour stopover turned into an hour, then an hour and a half. During this period the cabin staff moved through the aircraft, usually in pairs and whispering to each other. Using flashlights they made a visual inspection of the plane. Then the pilot announced that the plane would be taking off in ten minutes. He wanted the first ten rows of passengers to move to the rear of the aircraft to counter balance for the redistribution of passenger luggage. "First class just became ballast." Roberts mentioned to Vilaca that they may be on the verge of some very dramatic pictures. Frank prepared the video camera by putting the battery belt on and fitting the sun-gun. It then occurred to Roberts that because they very close to game preserve, if not in it, if the plane came down other members of the food chain would be attracted to the meal via air mail. Vilaca was not pleased to have these additional thoughts shared with him saying, "You're an officer. Do you mind keeping comments like that to yourself?". When the aircraft took off, all knuckles were white, and above noise of the engines you could have heard a pin drop. It was almost a case of the passengers wishing the plane into the air.

In Nairobi and after several telephone calls back to Canada, Roberts was told they had reservations the next day on a United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) flight to Kigali. Naturally when they arrived at the UNAMIR check-in counter at the airport nobody had heard of them. Because they were in uniform, and had a plausible story, they got the seats of two no-shows. After a two hour flight on a Southern Air Transport C-130 Hercules they arrived in Kigali. The airport terminal, which had been a beautiful building at one time, had been thoroughly machine-gunned. An RPG round had entered though a window and hit an internal support column spaying the arrival area with shrapnel. At the virtually abandoned building they put their equipment on a couple of Canadian military trucks and hooked a ride to a soccer stadium in downtown Kigali. At the stadium they met their contact, Captain Marc Walsh of the Queen's York Rangers. After a two and half-hour truck ride, passed a Chinese cemetery just outside Kigali, through several tropical downpours they arrived at the 2 Field Ambulance compound in Mareru 20km from the Zairian (now called the Congo) border. Despite the fact they were almost on the equator the daytime temperature did not raise much above 20 degrees Celsius, and at night it dropped to about 3 degrees. This is because this part of Rwanda, in valley where they were, is at approximately 7,500' above sea level.

Because the temperature drops to 3 degrees C at night hypothermia is a major cause of death for newborn babies. To address this problem the medical staff asked the engineers if they could build an incubator. Within a day or so and using plywood they brought from Canada, a metal door with a window, and a scrounged thermostat, the engineers constructed an incubator that would protect four babies. Patients were treated and when necessary kept overnight in a facility made out modular tents. The low overnight temperatures presented another problem for medical staff. IV solution and keeping it at body temperature in a tented environment. Once again the medical staff turned to the engineers for a solution. The quick fix 14,000km away from Canada was to reverse the freeze/thaw cycle of one of the commercial fridges they brought with them. Now the inside of the fridge was warm regardless of the outside temperature. The next challenge? Preventing the IV bags from cooling while the fluid is administered to the patient. The engineering response? To make an insulated envelop by laying a series army blankets, and use a pop riveter to hold them together. They then cut out the profile of the IV bag.

Even under the best of circumstances there are not many toys in Rwanda. So children finding a misplaced or dropped grenade would not realise what they were playing with until it was too late. After two children were brought to the hospital with both hands and a leg blown-off after playing with the grenades they had found, the engineers developed a mine and explosive awareness program. Unfortunately both the children died from their injuries. Using deactivated mines, grenades, bullets and mortar bombs several engineer teams toured the area to show children what the lethal munitions look like, and to warn them of the dangers of playing them. An engineer would show the weapon, give a description in French. The interpreter would repeat it in the local dialect. It was planned to reach over 2,000 children before the deployment ended.

One of the patients was having a very difficult confinement. Despite the fact it was night and curfew was in effect, because of the mother's condition it was decided to take her by ambulance to a "Doctors Without Borders" hospital. The hospital was located in Ruhengeri about an hours drive away. The patient was placed into a Canadian Forces ambulance, and accompanied by a security team from 3 Commando, The Airborne Regiment. Having worked as an ENG news camera operator for five years, Cpl Vilaca immediately recognised a dramatic human-interest story unfolding that should be documented. On his own initiative he arranged to be invited to accompany the team to the hospital. As the doctors made the incision to begin the Caesarean Section the hospital electric generator failed. The reflex action of the members of security team from 3 Commando was to grab their flashlights and to get into operating room and to provide enough light so the surgeons could complete the operation and save two lives. After the birth it took five minutes of frantic work to get the baby to breathe. Power to the operating room was restored just doctors closed the women's incision. Vilaca captured the complete operation on camera and selected scenes were included on the stock footage tape provided to broadcasters. Some television stations choose not to use it on their 6:00pm newscasts, because it was too graphic.

Capt Walsh had been in-theatre with 2 Fd Amb for several weeks, and had been instrumental in inviting Roberts and Vilaca to Rwanda. He had already mapped out a number of story lines, so he and Roberts started to co-ordinate interviews by matching marketable stories, with the soldiers to be interviewed, to the broadcaster to be offered the story. While they were doing this, Cpl Vilaca was recording cover video footage required for the broadcast. The plan was to conduct the interviews the last two days that Roberts and Vilaca were in country, so that involving events in Rwanda would not overtake them during their return trip to Canada, dating the interview.

Roberts and Vilaca flew from Kigali on all white C-130 with UN markings. The aircraft had a crew of two, a pilot and flight engineer. Judging by the condition of it's interior, this plane was no stranger to crisis situations. There were gapes between the doors and the fuselage when the doors closed. The transport plane was packed, when Roberts realised that there were spare seats in the cockpit, he spoke to pilot and asked if Cpl Vilaca could sit in the jump seat, between and behind the pilot and co-pilot seats, to record scenes from the front the aircraft. He then returned to the cargo area and squeezed into a web seat in the centre of the plane. Army routine teaches the soldier to get sleep where ever you can. So shortly after take off and they had been up since 3:00am in the morning he fell asleep. Anyone who has flown in a C-130 Hercules without earplugs will tell you that it is noisy at the best of times. When the doors do not close properly it is even louder.

Part way through the flight Roberts awoke to people shouting as a person on the other side of the plane was having some sort of seizure, and thrashing around on the floor. A number of Australian soldiers were on that side of the plane, they immediately responded and appeared to calm the person down and defuse the situation. In preparation for landing in Nairobi the gentleman was placed on the webbed seats in the prone position. The passengers who gave up their seats, the Australian soldiers, stood during the landing, supported themselves by holding on to cargo nets. As the passenger was taken off the plane on stretcher, Vilaca exited the cockpit. He told Roberts that because off climatic conditions, shortly after takeoff the C-130 Hercules started to ice up heavily. The flight engineer told the pilot, "If we don't start going up now, we're going to go down anyway". Without putting on a mask the pilot, took the transport plane up to 22,000ft before clearing the icing zone. Bearing in mind that Mount Everest is only 29,000ft high, and that climbers wear oxygen masks to climb it, it appeared that the gentleman on the stretcher had suffered from a case of altitude sickness.

Roberts and Vilaca spent a day in Nairobi finalizing video shot lists, and taking a couple of hours to go a "safari" just outside the city. That night they caught the KLM flight to Amsterdam. The aircraft took off just after midnight, after a brief layover in Amsterdam they arrived in Toronto 31 hours later and then they went straight into a video edit suite. Vilaca started to assemble the stock footage tape, while Roberts finalized covering letters and produced a shot list to accompany the interview and stock footage tapes. The next morning, after a couple of hours, sleep dupes of the stock footage were made and the CBC, SRC and Global interviews were hand delivered to the broadcaster. CBC microwaved the CBC Newsworld interview to Calgary, and the SRC interview to Ottawa. Global invited Roberts into the edit suite while they cut their segment together. Within 24 hours of their returning to Toronto, 3 of the 9 interviews had been orchestrated in Rwanda were broadcast. The rest of the interview and stock footage tapes were sent by overnight courier to the other participating stations in the province. By Sunday October 16th all the broadcasters had aired their interviews, this was a week to the day that Vilaca and Roberts had returned.

The following double-ender interviews from Rwanda were aired by participating broadcasters:

DATE	BROADCASTER	PROGRAM	LOCATION	RUN TIME
Monday 10 October	Global Television Network	First Edition	Toronto / Ontario	3 min 42 sec
Monday 10 October	CBC Newsworld	Early Edition	Calgary / National	6 min 38 sec
Monday 10 October	SRC Network	Ce Soir	Ottawa / National	2 min 07 sec
Wednesday 12 October	CTV Network	Canada AM	Toronto / National	N/A
Thursday 13 October	CFPL/CHWI-TV	News Now	London / Windsor	1 min 20 sec
Thursday 13 October	CJOH-TV	Newsline	Ottawa	4 min 43 sec
Thursday 13 October	CHEX-TV	Newswatch	Peterborough	3 min 04 sec
Thursday 13 October	CHRO-TV		Pembroke / Ottawa	N/A
Sunday 16 October	CTV Network	Sunday Edition	Ottawa / National	4 min 42 sec

Seven months later the Commander of the Army visited LFCA Headquarters in Toronto. During the public affairs briefing the late Lieutenant-General Gordon Reay (he was killed, after he retired, on 21 December 2000, in Zagreb, Croatia after being involved in a car accident) was shown the Global Television interview. Because he had watched the broadcast at home, he thought it was a regular television news report, and that Global Television had been in Rwanda. The briefer then told the Commander that the network had not been there, and that LFCA public affairs had been. Immediately Gen Reay asked how the story was produced. He immediately ordered Vilaca and Roberts be sent to Bosnia and Croatia to generate the same type of positive coverage. Military public affairs in Ottawa claimed that neither Roberts or Vilaca were qualified to use the Betacam camera system, the same equipment used in Rwanda, Ottawa would not provide it, so the equipment had to be rented privately.


*Click here for photographs of 2Fd Amb*		Click here to return to my home page

Background information