Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

by Roméo Dallaire

  Luckily, the October Crisis did not escalate to the point where lethal force was necessary, although there were some close calls that seemed pretty ugly at the time. One bitter evening late in November, my soldiers were guarding the Quebec Ministry of Justice and central courthouse. I was inside with a small reserve force of five or six men. Everything was quiet, so quiet that the Quebec City cops who shared the building with us complained that since we’d arrived they were bored. All of a sudden a car came screeching down the street and stopped dead in front of one of my soldiers. The driver got out of the car, cursing a blue streak, and without any provocation, started beating up the soldier so severely that he ended up in hospital. I had guards posted around the building so that everybody was covered off and no one was isolated, but none of them could move from their positions to help their buddy because of the possibility that this was a trap or decoy. They radioed for backup and we raced out to assist. But the police, who were monitoring our radio frequency and were desperate for a little action, heard the call, too. In seconds, a half-dozen cop cars with sirens blaring and roof lights blazing came barrelling down the narrow street. Brawny cops leapt out, hauled the guy off and proceeded to make him regret whatever impulse had caused him to attack soldiers. As one officer said afterwards, “Nobody is going to hurt our soldiers and get away with it.” The police were protecting the soldiers who were there to protect law and order!

  I was proud of my men. They had endured incredible provocation and responded exactly as trained. It pleased me that Sergeant Chiasson and I had been able to build that level of skill and discipline in the troop, that they had used their heads and followed orders. It was my first taste of true command.

  On December 3, 1970, an army intelligence unit uncovered the approximate location of the FLQ cell that was holding James Cross prisoner. Almost an entire battalion of the Royal 22ième formed a tight circle around a block of nondescript row houses in north Montreal, and as the nation waited, the final tense negotiations to resolve the crisis began. Hours later, a thin, pale James Cross was hustled out of the house along with his kidnappers, who were placed on board a Yukon transport aircraft and flown to Cuba. The crisis was over. By January, I was back in Valcartier and the routine of peacetime soldiering.

  2

  “RWANDA, THAT’S IN AFRICA, ISN’T IT?”

  IN EVERY REGIMENT of the Canadian Forces, there is an informal council of elders—senior or retired officers who remain intimately connected to the life of the regiment. These elders determine a regiment’s individual culture and character. One of their key responsibilities is to select the so-called streamers, the young men or women who the elders believe have the right stuff to become future generals. There is never any official announcement or acknowledgement of this process, but once you are chosen, it’s as if an invisible hand is reaching out to guide you, nurturing your career through a carefully selected series of command and staff positions that test and prepare you for higher command. Becoming a streamer doesn’t mean success is assured; on the contrary, if you blow any of the commands you are offered, your career is over, or at least stalled.

  My first shot at becoming a streamer came in the spring of 1971. I had been on exercise with the regiment for about three weeks, and on the last day, two CF5 fighter planes that had been dogfighting north of Bagotville, Quebec, crashed in mid-air. The pilots were lost in the dense bush. The air base at Bagotville tried to mount a rescue, but one of its helicopters crashed while attempting to land, which resulted in more casualties. My regiment was the designated rapid reaction force and was called out to support the search.

  The previous evening, we had celebrated the end of the exercise with a smoker, a huge party with plenty of food and beer bought with the profits from the canteen; there wasn’t a man in the battery that was not severely hungover. As usual I had totally immersed myself in the festivities and was nursing a wicked headache when the battery commander, Major Bob Beaudry, called me over. A dignified gentleman of few words, he got right to the point. “You’ve been chosen to lead the advance party,” he said. “There are helicopters waiting for you and your troops back at Valcartier. They’ll fly you up north where you’ll link up with the air force and commence the search. The rest of the regiment will join you in about two days.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Hungover or not, I was being offered a chance at an independent command. Even though it was a grim assignment, it offered a fantastic opportunity for us to test our mettle.

  Forty of us jammed into a couple of helicopters and flew up to a remote logging camp close to the last known position of the aircraft. I quickly established a base camp, and we started the gruelling work of searching the dense, trackless bush of northern Quebec. By the third day, our muscles ached so badly from the effort of stepping over dead trees and rotting stumps that we could no longer lift our legs and had to drop and roll over the logs and low-lying scrub.

  By then the rest of the regiment had joined us, but we had set such a blistering pace that we were way out in front. Finally, on our fifth day, one of my party let out a yell. He had stumbled across the helmet of one of the missing pilots. We searched the area until it got dark, without success. The next morning, a low-flying search and rescue team from Bagotville found the pilot’s body, sitting upright beside a tree, his parachute caught in the branches. Any rush of satisfaction we might have felt at achieving our aim was quickly chastened by the thought of that shattered young body. I can still remember the hush that fell over us when we got the news. We didn’t know him, but he was a soldier who had died serving his country, and there wasn’t a man among us who didn’t utter a prayer for him and his family.

  Another group eventually located the other pilot’s body, and we were flown out ahead of the rest of the regiment to Bagotville, where we stayed overnight. My troops were billeted, and I was given a room in the officer’s mess. I stowed my gear and made my way to the bar, still dressed in the army combat greens that I had been wearing for close to a month—I didn’t smell too fresh. There was a bunch of pilots at the bar, mourning the loss of their colleagues. These men knew who I was and that my troops had spent the last five days combing the bush looking for them. Instead of offering to buy me a beer, they scattered, leaving me alone at the bar. Not one of them came up and said a word to me. I worked myself into a righteous rage over this silent treatment, and after I had drunk about half of my beer, I slammed my glass down so hard on the bar that the beer spilled all over the place and stormed out of the room. Not until I had calmed down did my father’s words come back to me: if you want to be content in the military, never expect anyone to say thank you. Even your own brother officers may not be able to reach over the line of stupid inter-force rivalries to shake your hand.

  What is a peacetime career in the army? How do you grow as a leader when there is no armed conflict to test you? You train and train, and then you train others. I received a number of good training assignments, due in part, I believe, to the fact that I was still single and available, unlike many of my peers who were already married and raising young families. For some of us, the army had to be a higher calling. The old attitude was that if the army wanted you to have a family, they would’ve issued you one. I was more than willing to dedicate myself and soon learned another hard military lesson. Even in training, mistakes can cost lives.

  I had a two-year posting to militia units in the Quebec area, and in the summer of 1971, we were running a very large program called Katimavik, which offered basic reserve-force training to young people. Soldiers with families were given priority for leave, and many of the more senior officers were away at the same time. I had to work flat out to get the program off the ground—it was a last-minute initiative imposed by the federal minister responsible for youth employment. I had to put together, almost overnight, a training and support plan for close to six hundred young people. Blinded by my own can-do attitude, I didn’t realize I was actually in way over my head.

  One of my ol
d classmates, who was now a reservist, had been hired to take care of about sixty of these potential recruits. He told me he couldn’t find a suitable training site near the garrison and so had made an arrangement with a farmer in the Charlevoix area, a fair distance away. Once he had assured me that he’d ironed out the logistics problems, I gave him the go-ahead.

  My buddy took off with three heavy army trucks, with eighteen candidates sitting on metal benches in the back of each one—close to the load limit. Unfortunately, the drivers of the trucks were inexperienced and the old highway along the St. Lawrence River was hilly and dangerous in spots, with S bends that swooped down close to the water. One of the drivers missed a curve and his truck spun out of control, tossing most of the young men out along the embankment close to the river’s edge. Six were killed.

  Six young lives lost because of one stupid decision. I was devastated. There was a huge investigation and blame was apportioned—I received a reproof. But I couldn’t escape the thought that I hadn’t done enough, that I should have asked more questions, that I should have known better. The rawness of the grief of those six families remains seared in my memory, a constant reminder of the particular trust of command.

  I had met Elizabeth Roberge at a regimental wedding in the fall of 1969, and we had begun dating. Beth taught kindergarten at one of the Valcartier base schools. She and her colleagues would come for lunch at the mess, and I was smitten by her liveliness and charm. She was the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Guy Roberge, who had served with my father in the Vandoos in the late twenties and early thirties, and he had also commanded the prestigious old French-Canadian reserve regiment les Voltigeurs de Québec. I was a young subaltern, “living in” (staying in the officer’s mess) and sending a portion of my small salary home to my parents. Beth’s family was two generations army, and they understood that a good meal was a welcome treat to a young, near-impoverished officer.

  From the moment I stepped in the door of the Roberges’ lovely house, with its wonderful warm smell of spices, its clean, starched linen, and family treasures, I felt at home. Beth’s mother was a gracious lady, extremely cultured and a superb cuisinière. But her father was especially dear to me; he became both a mentor and a second father. The Roberges had four daughters and no sons, which I suspect was a bit of a disappointment to Colonel Roberge, as he had rare occasion in the family to talk army. He seemed lonely for the companionship of another soldier.

  Sunday dinner at the Roberges’ was a formal family occasion and everybody had their assigned seat at the beautiful old hardwood table. As soon as I sat down to my first dinner, Colonel Roberge rearranged the seating order so that I was in the place of privilege at his right-hand side. I kept that seat every Sunday for all the years I was posted in Quebec City.

  My father-in-law had an impressive career, from commanding a regiment to serving in the Italian campaign as the liaison officer between the Free French and the 1st Canadian Corps. He had watched top-ranked generals as they plotted the battles of the campaign, and his stories held me spellbound. On his return to Canada in 1943, he had nurtured and trained two mobilized reserve infantry regiments for service overseas. His many insights into leadership helped shape my own thoughts and practices. We became very close over the years, and he gave me much wise counsel. I remember that just before I was promoted to brigadier-general, my father-in-law lay dying in the old veterans’ hospital, which is now the Laval University Medical Centre. When I went to see him the last time, his breathing was very shallow, his eyes closed, and it was obvious he was slipping away. I leaned over and whispered that I had been promoted general. His eyelids flickered for a moment and I could swear that a shadow of a smile played about his mouth. He was as proud of me as he would have been of a son. He died two days later in his sleep.

  Elizabeth had been teaching on the Canadian base in Lahr, Germany, since 1970. She loved the life there and invited me over for a vacation. We had a wonderful time together skiing the Swiss Alps and running around in her new Peugeot 504. But I did have an ulterior motive for making the visit. Back home the word was that there was no way that I, as one of the few French-Canadian officers in the regiment, was going to get posted to either the Airborne, or 4 Brigade in Germany. I intended to lobby the commanding officer of the artillery regiment for a posting. I spent some time in the garrison, mingling with the troops and officers at the mess and having a great time. I guess I must have made an impression, because Lieutenant Colonel Harry Steen, the commanding officer at the time, says he still remembers the mad French Canadian who injected so much fun into the place. He became an enthusiastic supporter of my efforts to get posted to Germany.

  It was 1973 and we were still in the middle of the Cold War; Germany was definitely an operational theatre with all the attendant realities. After I arrived, we were continually on long, live-fire exercises and huge NATO manoeuvres that lasted weeks. However, the life in the field as well as in garrison was outstanding. It had to be, since there were no phones and no TV, just a nascent radio station run by the CBC and Radio-Canada. The folks on the French broadcast were left-wing peaceniks who were just a whisper away from being outright Quebec nationalists, but they were such good company I couldn’t resist hanging out with them. I remember when René Lévesque’s pro-sovereignty government was elected in 1976. We had a great party inside the radio station, with me continually looking over my shoulder to make sure none of the troops saw me. It was in Lahr that I first met Maurice Baril, a fellow officer who would be crucial to my posting in Rwanda. He was from the legendary Vandoos, some years my senior, a major and second-in-command of his battalion.

  I married Beth, after a seven-year courtship, on June 26, 1976. It was a small wedding, since most of the Valcartier regiment was in Montreal to provide security for the Olympic Games. After we got back from a six-week honeymoon in Germany, I was caught up in a whirl of activity, attending courses as well as being called out on a NATO exercise. Beth returned to her teaching job at Valcartier. I was supposed to be posted to Army Headquarters in Montreal. At the last minute, however, I was sent to Gagetown, New Brunswick, as head of a national program called Francotrain, which was set up to translate all the forces’ manuals, documents, and pedagogical tools used from English into French. It was a stressful time for Beth. Amidst all this upheaval and uncertainty, she had a miscarriage the night I flew out to Germany on exercise. Alone, she soldiered on as so many military wives do.

  Located in the little town of Oromocto on the St. John River, the Gagetown base is a pretty place but was a bit of a letdown after Germany. While at Gagetown, I was promoted major. Since I was young, only thirty-two, many of the older guys complained that I was being fast-tracked because I was a francophone. This was the first time I had encountered the bitter jealousy that can sour regimental life. Being separated out from your brother officers can be a lonely and vulnerable position.

  Eighteen months into the posting, my eldest son, Willem, was born, and for a while at least, all the back-biting took a back seat to my family. My father was over the moon. For someone who had grown up without any family to speak of, seeing that third generation was important to him. I never saw him so full of love and pride as he was when he first held Willem in his arms. He died suddenly a few months after Willem was born, having suffered a stroke.

  I was posted back to Valcartier in 1978 to assume command of a battery—120 gunners. I was in my element. I noticed that my battery, and for that matter the entire regiment, was not working to potential during exercises because many of the signallers were unilingual French Canadians, and the fire discipline orders were always given in a special jargon that required mastery of military English. French-speaking gunners simply couldn’t cope. I pushed for some reforms, chiefly the ability to give the orders in French. Almost eleven years after the Offical Languages Act had passed, we were still fighting these stupid language restrictions, and as a result, we were not reaching our potential as an operational artillery regiment.

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p; Luckily, the commanding officer was a reasonable, open-minded man named Tim Sparling, who gave me the go-ahead to try out French commands in the field. I ran a conversion course, translating all the technical stuff into French; it worked like a charm, and our effectiveness increased dramatically. The signallers were ecstatic because they finally understood what they were saying. Over the years there had been much muttering about me being a French-Canadian nationalist, but nobody could argue with the result. When the troops were able to fight in their own language, there was a positive surge in morale and effectiveness.

  I was soon given the opportunity to attend the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Virginia. It was a great year, although it took my family and me a while to adjust to the culture. Our sponsors were Major Bob List and his wife, Marty. List was an A-6 Intruder fighter bomber pilot who flew off aircraft carriers during his two long tours in Vietnam. He and his wife got a bit of a surprise when their young daughter, listening to Willem speak French, cried out, “He doesn’t speak English!” To which I responded, immediately and without thinking, “He doesn’t speak American either.” Things went uphill from there.

  At the staff college in Virginia, I saw first-hand the terrible price exacted by Vietnam. There wasn’t one of my instructors and fellow officers whose body had not been horribly scarred in battle. The mental toll was equally apparent, revealing itself in bitter invectives against the U.S. generals and higher command who had either screwed up in the field or stayed comfortably at home. I wondered whether I wouldn’t have been equally suspicious of politicians, grand strategists and pencil pushers from NDHQ if I had lost 63 per cent of my classmates in combat.