Soldiers Made Me Look Good

by Lewis MacKenzie

  In fact, the UN Security Council–authorized, U.S.-led intervention in Somalia in December 1992 to rescue a floundering UN-led mission was the most successful in the history of the organization. A measure of security was quickly established, and humanitarian aid was delivered throughout the country. Six months later, the United States started to withdraw its troops and the UN took over command of the mission. The UN convinced the U.S. to leave a small contingent of combat troops in Somalia because other nations were not lining up to take over the major combat role. The U.S. reluctantly left behind a small force to work under a UN mandate and control. On October 3, 1993, two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters were shot down during a misguided UN attempt to capture or kill warlord Mohammed Farah Adid. Once again the UN had proved itself incapable of commanding and controlling combat operations. President Bill Clinton ordered all remaining U.S. soldiers out of Somalia by March 1994, and the UN abandoned the country a year later, leaving it in worse shape than it found it. Unfortunately, we had yet another good example for our documentary of what was wrong with the UN.

  While filming in Mogadishu, we decided to visit the site of one of the downed Black Hawk helicopters. We were guided through a rabbit’s warren of back alleys no more than two metres wide, defined on both sides by crumbling adobe walls linked with similarly constructed homes facing the alley. As an infantry soldier I couldn’t imagine a more difficult place to fight an enemy who would be familiar with the complicated and haphazard network of tiny passages. After a kilometre we came to an open clearing the size of half a football field. A Black Hawk rested on top of a collapsed adobe shack. It had been stripped clean of everything of value and was a mere aluminum and magnesium skeleton. We started to film, as Mike with his camera and Alistair with his sound equipment took up their positions a metre in front of me.

  We had hired two “technicals” for our protection. They were much in demand and as a result expensive, around $500 a day, thanks to the inflated fees paid by the major U.S. television networks. Ours were armed with AK-47s. They stood off to the side during the filming.

  A minute into my script, I could see a crowd forming as I looked over Mike’s shoulder and directly in front of me. The crowd was rapidly growing and moving in our direction. I decided to stop my commentary and turned to look at our protectors. They looked very ill at ease. One raised his AK-47 and cocked it to put a round in the chamber. As he pulled the cocking handle to the rear, the bottom fell off his magazine, the spring followed and a single 7.63 mm steel-jacketed round fell to the ground! That was the limit of his arsenal—a single bullet. So it looked like it was time to negotiate. By now the crowd had surrounded us and was chanting and making threatening gestures. More than once I heard, “Americans, Americans.” The light came on just as the second of our protectors started yelling, “Canada, Canada!” To my considerable amazement, the crowd calmed down as our guard explained what we were doing. The mood of the crowd shifted to one of pride in having a U.S. helicopter “trophy” in their midst. One elderly woman, though, remained aggressive towards us. It turned out that the helicopter had crashed on top of her house, killing some members of her family. She wanted to be compensated and presumably thought we looked and acted enough like Americans to qualify as potential compensators. Much as we empathized with her plight, we agreed that it was time to get out of the area—before the mood changed again.

  Our crew’s next stop was the Balkans. It became a bit complicated when Bosnian President Izetbegovic refused to grant us an interview. There was a warrant out for my arrest in Bosnia, so we decided to fly on a UN flight to Sarajevo from Zagreb, Croatia. We would spend only a few hours on the ground in the UN-controlled area, say hello to the UN commander, Sir Michael Rose, shoot some footage at my old headquarters and then return to Zagreb on what the UN now called “Maybe Airlines.”

  Since I was not welcome on the Bosniak side of the frontline separating the Bosniak and Serb forces, it was not possible for us to drive the short distance over the mountain to Pale for another interview with the leader of the breakaway Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic. The odds were that I would be identified and arrested (or worse) as I left or returned to the government-controlled area. We flew back to Zagreb, rented a car and, with a few sets of dummy plates that we changed as we crossed each national border, drove from Zagreb to Budapest to Belgrade. Three days later, we took the back route through the Serb-controlled area of Bosnia into Pale.

  Karadzic always enjoyed the opportunity to plead his case with the West and immediately arranged for the interview to take place in his office. It was beginning to snow. There was some concern that if we waited too long, we might not be able to make it to our overnight accommodation farther up the mountain at one of the hotels close to the 1984 Olympics downhill ski course.

  During the interview, Karadzic sounded more like a real estate agent than the leader of a warring faction in a three-sided civil war. He took me to the map of Bosnia and explained the colour codes, indicating that some areas of Bosnia were more valuable than others—sort of a play on the three priorities when buying a house: “location, location, location.” He explained that the Bosnian Serbs would be prepared to trade land with the country’s Muslims; he always called them Turks, a pejorative reference harking back to the Ottoman invasion and their victory in the Balkans in the fourteenth century. The size of the present-day territorial exchanges would be determined by the assumed value of the property. Karadzic’s aim was to carve out a contiguous area for his Bosnian Serb Republic within the borders of the existing Bosnia.

  The interview over, we started to pack up our kit. Karadzic motioned to me to remain behind as David, Mike and Alistair moved outside to our rented Volkswagen van. He sat behind his desk, reached down and opened a drawer. He removed a small wooden box and said, “General MacKenzie, you will recall that when you left Sarajevo two years ago I tried to present you with this personally engraved 9 mm Yugoslavian military pistol. You explained that as a member of a UN mission you could not accept gifts from any side in the conflict. I understand that, but you are now here as a journalist and I want you to accept this pistol. It has your name on it.” My mind was quickly going through the options, particularly the one that had me refusing the gift, upsetting Karadzic in the middle of “his” territory while being almost out of fuel for our vehicle. We would be walking the 290 kilometres back to Belgrade if we couldn’t bum some fuel. I reached across the desk and accepted the pistol. I had to be careful here. I said, “I won’t be able to take the pistol back to Canada with me but I will hand it over to our ambassador in Belgrade for shipment to the police in Canada. Once they contact me, I’ll have it properly registered.” We said our goodbyes, and I caught up with the team outside. Alistair was the only one standing outside the vehicle, so I passed him the pistol and said, “I’ll explain later. Just slip this in one of your equipment bags when you have a chance.”

  With the snow now falling more heavily, the ride up the mountain to the site of the ’84 Olympics downhill competition was treacherous enough. But without any treads on our tires and no limited-slip rear end on the van the climb turned into a comedy. Just as we were killing ourselves laughing while sliding backwards (contrary to our preferred direction), Alistair blurted out: “David, we have to go back to Pale!”

  Our intrepid director, seated beside my driver’s seat, yelled over the scream of the Volkswagen’s boxer engine looking for traction, “For God’s sake, why?”

  Alistair, in the con of his life (and he has perpetrated many), explained: “David, do you remember when Karadzic took Lew up to the map on his office wall and started to talk about exchanging territory with the Bosnian Muslims?”

  David nodded.

  “Well, you and Mike were so intent listening to the two of them that I did something really stupid. I’d been admiring Karadzic’s pistol, the one that was sitting on his desk, and when no one was looking I took it and put it in my sound bag.” With this, Alistair reached into his bag and waved the pi
stol in the air. “I know it was the wrong thing to do, but it’s probably best we go back and ’fess up.”

  Even in the dark (no headlights were allowed at night during the war), David’s face was visibly alternating between the flush of rage and the drained look of panic. “Are you out of your bloody mind? You stole the pistol of an indicted war criminal! We’ll never get out of here alive, even if we do go back. We are totally screwed! Is it loaded?”

  At this point, the combination of us sliding backwards down one of the highest mountains in Yugoslavia, having no headlights, having consumed some plum brandy earlier and now listening to Alistair’s imaginative con got the best of me. I burst out laughing, soon to be joined by Mike who, while not in on the con, was always up for an adventure. Finally Alistair admitted it was all a joke, and David started to breathe again.

  A good thirty minutes later, we had climbed the kilometre to the Olympic hotel and settled down in our rooms—no heat, no lights, a thin blanket and no running water. It was like being back in the infantry.

  The documentary that came out of this adventure, A Soldier’s Peace, led off the CBC’s Witness series in 1994 and was released at the same time on the BBC and the A&E networks. It has been shown in over sixty countries, and in 1996 won a New York Film Festival award. Its observations on the inability of the UN Security Council to deal with serious threats to international peace and security are clearly still relevant: it continues to be aired on history and documentary channels. I imagine David shudders and Alistair smiles whenever they catch a glimpse of it while channel surfing.

  15: Hostage Release by Cellphone

  “Tell the general I’m going back to the field.”

  CAPTAIN PAT RECHNER, HANDCUFFED TO A LIGHTNING ROD NEAR AN AMMUNITION DEPOT IN PALE, BOSNIA

  IT WAS THE spring of 1995, the conflict in Bosnia continued to dominate the media and I was about to be dragged back into the morass yet again.

  The organizers of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley Apple Blossom Festival invited me to be their parade grand marshall on May 27, and then to help judge the Miss Apple Blossom contest at Acadia University that evening. Since the request had come from my home province and I had close relatives in the valley, I accepted. The organizers asked me to wear my uniform during the judging ceremonies, and I explained that I never wore my uniform when there was a chance that I might criticize government policy during my remarks (a principle I apply to this day), and thus I had not worn it since retiring twenty-six months earlier. I went on to admit that surely a beauty contest would not be controversial and that foreign policy would be the furthest thing from people’s minds. So, yes, I would be happy to make an exception on this occasion and wear my scarlet mess kit.

  During the previous week I had been outspoken in my interviews with the media, including spots on PBS’s McNeil-Lehrer News Hour and Larry King Live. I criticized the UN’s ridiculous plan to escalate the United Nations Protection Force (UNPRO-FOR) peacekeeping mission to a combat role involving NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serb positions without first removing the UN’s unarmed observers from their positions co-located with the Serbs. I predicted that the natural outcome of the action would be UN observers held as hostages and shields against further air attacks. On May 26, I boarded an Air Canada flight in Toronto for Halifax, intending to drive from the airport to Wolfville, arriving around noon.

  Meanwhile, in Pale, west of Sarajevo and the site of the downhill skiing competitions in the 1984 Olympics, three unarmed UN observers were taken hostage by Bosnian Serbs as the NATO bombing continued. One of the hostages, Canadian Captain Pat Rechner, was destined to become the public face of yet another failed UN policy. Pat was a fellow member of my regiment, the PPCLI, and a few years earlier he had been my aide de camp (personal assistant) at CFB Gagetown. Early on in his ordeal at Pale, he was handcuffed to a tall and sturdy metal antenna located directly in front of a massive ammunition bunker. The threat was clear: if NATO bombed the bunker, Pat would be vaporized. His captors must have watched too many American police shows on television because they decided to undo his handcuffs for a few minutes and let him make one telephone call. He decided to call his parents.

  Pat’s family had left Czechoslovakia when he was a baby. They had emigrated first to Austria and then to Canada, settling in Vancouver, where his dad was head of Austrian Airlines in Canada. Pat was glad to get the chance to call home, but on his first attempt his parents’ answering machine asked him to “leave a message.” As his captors started to take him back to the antenna for handcuffing, Pat said: “Look, I didn’t get through to my parents. Can I make one more call?”

  “Who would you call?” was the skeptical response.

  “General MacKenzie,” Pat replied.

  His captor was more than a little surprised, and fortunately he was impressed. A conversation ensued regarding how we knew each other and the fact that Pat had the number for our apartment in Etobicoke. He dialed it, presumably around the time I was passing over Montreal, about an hour from Halifax.

  Dora picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”

  “Dora, is that you? It’s Pat Rechner.”

  Dora hesitated and then blurted out, “Pat, what’s going on? I was just watching you—in fact, I’m still watching a clip of you on CNN right now. Are you OK?”

  “Yes, I’m OK. Would you please tell the general to let my parents know I’m fine and perhaps NDHQ also.”

  Dora asked, “What’s happening to you now?”

  What followed was a response that would not be clarified until new pictures flashed on the TV screens the following day. “I’m going back to the field,” Pat said. Unfortunately, the response could be interpreted as “I’m going back to my duty as a UN observer” or, more ominously, as “I’m going back to be handcuffed to my antenna in front of the ammo dump!”

  Coinciding with all the coverage of Captain Rechner and his ordeal, the news media started to phone our apartment in search of an interview. The first call was from CTV. Dora explained that I was en route to Annapolis Valley. The CTV rep explained that he wanted to talk to me about Captain Rechner. Dora said, “I expected that. In fact, I just spoke with him.”

  “Spoke with whom?” was the response.

  “With Captain Rechner,” she said.

  A long pause followed as the caller absorbed what he had just been told. “Mrs. MacKenzie, Captain Rechner is the lead story on every network as we speak. What did he say, and why did he call you?”

  For the next hour, Dora explained what had transpired and refused requests for on-camera interviews. Twenty minutes out of Halifax, the co-pilot came back to see me and said: “The folks at the airport have told us that there is a crush of media waiting to ambush you the moment you get off the plane. We thought you’d like to know.”

  “Thanks. Any idea what it’s about?”

  “Sorry, we haven’t heard a thing,” was all I heard just before the intercom announcement that we had started our descent into Halifax.

  When we disembarked at the Halifax airport, a swarm of reporters appeared, reminiscent of the scrums in Sarajevo. They all wanted a comment about what I knew about Captain Rechner’s situation. I had to admit to them that I only knew what I had seen along with everyone else who’d been following the saga on television. When they told me that Dora had been talking to Pat, I was more surprised than they were. I begged off any extensive interview, promising that I would be available later in the day at Acadia University and that I would then share with them anything I had discovered.

  When I reached Dora, she described what had happened. I tried to get her interpretation of how Pat sounded when he said, “I’m going back to the field.” I asked if he sounded anxious or relieved. Dora didn’t recall anything specific, so exactly what he meant remained a mystery until we saw him handcuffed to the antenna the following day.

  That evening at Acadia, I gave my first and last interviews in uniform since my retirement, including the ensuing thirteen years to t
oday. Assuming that the media would have little interest in one of the judges at the Miss Apple Blossom pageant, I had been ambushed by events. My friends watching the television news that night must have wondered what I was doing, decked out in my formal mess kit while discussing such a sensitive subject.

  There is a tradition in the PPCLI that if you don’t make it to the mess dinner in honour of your retirement within two years of your retirement date, the invitation is cancelled. My schedule had prevented me from making it to Calgary on the dates suggested for the previous two years; however, in April we settled on June 17, and Dora and I flew from Toronto the day before. This was the twenty-first day of Captain Rechner’s ordeal. To make matters worse, a dozen Canadian soldiers, members of the Royal 22nd Regiment (the Van Doos) had also been captured, in another location outside of Sarajevo, and were being held against their will as potential shields to thwart the NATO bombing of Bosnian Serb positions.

  The night of the mess dinner, Dora and I were about to leave our hotel on MacLeod Trail. Just as we approached the elevator, my cellphone rang. Thinking I would lose the connection in the elevator, we let it go without us. “Hello,” I answered.

  “General MacKenzie, its Nicola Koljevic calling you from Pale.” Three years earlier, at the beginning of the war, Vice-President Koljevic had been my primary point of contact with the Bosnian Serb breakaway leadership under Radovan Karadzic. He was a professor of Shakespearean literature who had taught at U.S. and Canadian universities. I found him to be the most reasonable of Karadzic’s entourage, and I noticed that Karadzic rarely made a decision without seeking Koljevic’s advice.

  By this time, Dora and I had returned to our hotel room. I knew this would be dicey. “Professor, thanks for calling,” I said. “Perhaps we can discuss the hostage issue. You know, you’re earning some really bad press, which you can do without.”