Jason Rogalewski-Slade - Rwanda

Junior crew commander

I was armoured corps crew commander, and B squad and 3rd/4th Cavalry Regiment in Townsville. So armoured personnel carriers. So at that stage I was a junior lance corporal, so a young lance corporal, and a crew commander. So my job in the deployment was the junior crew commander of the four armoured vehicles. And our role was to protect, with the infantry, the medical force of the Australian contingent. So about 300.

The old M113

My vehicle was actually Vietnam era. A lot of them were blown up in Vietnam and patched up, so mine had steel welding patches underneath from Vietnam. We just maintained them and kept them going. They've since been replaced with newer versions. But the old M113 was Vietnam era with a 50 cal and a 30-calibre machine gun in the turret.

And my job was just a crew commander with a driver, and we'd carried infantry section in the back. It's a square-based vehicle, compressed aluminium, so quite susceptible to rocket-propelled grenades. Generally anything below that machine gun fire is fine as far as penetration. But predominately troop amphibious armoured vehicle to carry infantry section around.

Training and selection

Back in those days we would spend 6-8 months a year out bush. Because we were one unique armoured cavalry squadron, we supported two infantry battalions, and artillery, and everyone else. So we were quite the rarity. We were out bush a fair bit supporting everyone, and it was not uncommon to be out bush in the field for eight months. Live fire activities all the time because we trained for conventional warfare; that's what we did in those days.

We were actually out bush and finishing an exercise about to go back for a weekend and then come back out again, and they said, "Right, we need four vehicles to stay behind." I was picked as one of them and I wasn't sure why with an infantry company. And they said, "You're now starting force preparation for a place that we're deploying in two weeks' time, there in Rwanda." And we just said, "Where's that?" They said, "It's in Central Africa." And we said, "Well, what's going on." And they said, "Oh, it's just some skirmish and stuff that's been going on. A bit of conflict. And you're deploying in support of a medical force as a security."

So that was sort of the brief and that was it. Bearing in mind, my regiment went to Somalia as well two years earlier, so a lot of practices we did were from knowledge we learned from the soldiers that were gone. My whole regiment went with 1st Battalion. We were supporting the 2nd/4th Battalion those days. And Alpha Company, 2/4 RAR was to go, and our four armoured vehicles were to protect literally the whole 300 contingent. So we quickly devised some form of plan going off what was learned in Somalia to bring into what we thought we would be doing over there when we get there. That was it.

And that's all we knew. And when we did a little bit of training and went back to the base to quickly sort out our affairs to go... Because we were ready to go, I mean, we were prepared. But we were prepared for a combat role because that's what we trained for. Realistically, when we got there, it wasn't. There was just something totally different which, with the UN, is a little bit different. We weren't peacemaking, we were peacekeeping. And there's a big difference there, especially when you're peacekeeping, as we found out.

A white paint job

So we were flown over by the U.S. within Galaxy's, the massive cargo planes. And they literally flew in from Japan, picked us up. It's funny, our armoured vehicles, we had to paint them with house paint from Bunnings. Made a stencil, black "UN", and put on the side and spray painted that. But literally with a roller, painted the armoured vehicles with white house paint because that's what we did. And we tried to work out what we think UN would look like and the whole thing was white.

So normally you go from a camouflage armoured vehicle to white, which I've got a photo of, but just quite funny. And we literally sat at the airport. We sat there for a couple of days because we were the last to leave. I think the bobcat left before us, I don't know why, you'd think you'd have armoured vehicles in there first. But we went in there and we were the sort of last lift to get into the country. And flew from Townsville to Diego Garcia, refuelled in the middle of the Pacific and then flew straight into Kigali, and got in about 3:00 in the morning.

A mad and surreal beginning

To be honest, it was mad. The U.S. literally unloaded us, and as we got off, they're going, "Watch out, there's mortars in the tarmac there. There's mines out there." So the ground guider's parked here and said, "Right, wait for the sun. You can't go anywhere until the sun comes up because of movement." We heard some rifle fire going off in the distance. The airport terminal had been shot to buggery, holes and everything all through it. So it was just like you just landed in a war zone. So it's ironic, 18 hours earlier we ate McDonald's at Townsville, and then we landed. And then this was going on.

Ironically too, once the sun come up, the U.S. had virtually gone. They just literally packed up and left. There were bugger all U.S. there. They cleared out. And I think that was because of Somalia. They didn't want a repeat of what happened with the Black Hawk incident, et cetera. They literally left. That was another ironic thing. We had some ammunition, we got some. One of the first things I saw when the sun came up, and I was looking at the airport, was a little kid carrying a water jerry on his head with his mother and stepping over bodies out the front of the airport. And he sort of waved to us which... that was a bit surreal.

Another strange thing was, in the front of the airport, was a freshly dug fair bit of dirt. And it turns out it was a mass grave. And someone's watch was going off under the dirt, like "beep, beep." And I just said, "Wow, you don't see any of that." So my driver was relatively new in the army, he'd only been in six months. And he was, in those days, lucky to get a deployment because they generally sent senior people on the deployment but he got the luck of the draw to come.

He was actually pretty upset and I didn't know what would occur, and I said to him, "Look, have you shot someone? What's going on?" And he said, "I miss my girlfriend." And I said, "Look, we've more things to worry about right now with all this going on than that and we'll talk about it later." But that was another point that sort of... And this all happened literally as the sun's coming up. So you can imagine it was a bit different from Townsville McDonald's.

Mission focussed

I think, for me, you've just got to be mission focused, whatever that mission may be. You don't have time to dwell on family matters or issues. And I literally got him involved in the vehicle and said, "Right, you need to do this, and have you done this?" Just to get him off that mindset and getting back into what we're doing. So at that stage I still didn't have a clue what we're doing. So this is the other thing too. We still wore our black berets.

We hadn't even been given the blue ones. Now, my armoured corps background is black berets with a silver badge. As we literally got from the airport and the vehicle came and picked us from the compound to take us to the Australian compound, we stopped and quickly checked the vehicle. We got out, and everyone was just running away from us scared. And I didn't know was going on. We had lollies and we just wanted to try and...

In the middle of the African country. They just ran away. And then I said, "Look, I don't know what's going on." And the officer that picked us up, he said, "Oh, you got to get those hats off." And I said, "Why?" He said, "Because the Hutu Interahamwe and the previous army wore black berets." So we didn't know. We didn't have the UN hats. So we got them when we got to the compound but. So we quickly took them off and then they handed us some berets and stuff. So we just had to get mission focused and get back into it straight away and that's how I taught him.

Accommodation

Yeah, so it was a shared compound. It was an old university sort of set up, three-tiered for all the ORs, us soldiers. Pretty rudimentary. We had double bunks, springs. No mattresses, we just put cardboard on there. We didn't get mattress for about 3-4 months into it so we just slept on cardboard on these spring mattresses. Generally, there was about 18 to a bit of a dorm, or a corridor. So three towers, all the soldiers slept in there.

The officers had their single accommodation with the ladies. There was about probably 28-30 women on the deployment, mainly nurses, medical staff, et cetera, dental side of the house. And myself, the infantry company, and all the other guys slept in these multi-tiered things. So literally part of their old university that we took over, and fortified, and put wire up, and sandbagged, and we made it the compound. It was right next door to the RPF compound too, which is the Rwandan Tutsi.

Patrolling

So, yeah, my vehicle was parked at the front gate. Because we were quickly reformed as the QRF for Kigali: Quick Reaction Force. The stadium which the Canadian Brits with the bigger UN headquarters had some armoured vehicles and that but they weren't mobilized, so I quickly became the QRF. And ironically, and this is something that I still disagree with, because we were a threat to the local army who were emerging, and a lot of them were kid soldiers with RPGs, and machine guns, and AK's, that were intimidated by my armoured vehicle.

So we initially were patrolling in pairs, which you always do. You never go out with less than two armoured vehicles. But they complained to the UN headquarters and they said, "All right, you can't do it. You can only send one vehicle." So ironically, it was me. So I would do that, patrolling, whether it's taking a rubbish tip truck to the tip, whether it's patrolling Kigali, we had CARE Australian orphanages, we had other key installations that we'd have to look after, we'd go and check on. And I would do that pretty well on a regular basis every day or two. But it was literally me, and an infantry section driving around Kigali in one armoured vehicle so.

Downtime

Well, for me, our armoured vehicles, we've got to maintain them virtually all the time, so we were doing that. In the downtime of a day, we just chill. It wasn't smart phones, it wasn't as much technology. We had a pay phone where you had to... you could ring home and you had to work out the timezone to ring home. At the time I had a girlfriend back home so I'd try and call her whenever I could. It was a $20 U.S. phone card you'd put in.

It'd expire pretty quick as you'd imagine because it was satellite link, so it would zap up pretty quick. We had three pubs, boozers, sort of things. So soldiers club, senior NCO's club, and a officers mess. So we could have some beers on a Friday and Saturday night just to unwind. That'd become problematic if someone had more than the two cans, but we had a system where we'd put our ammunition down in the guardroom and you'd virtually go back, if you were sober enough the next day, you'd get your ammo back.

Which we generally were, but that was our way of unwinding. We had to share the compound initially with the Ghanaians and got a bit of a Ghanaian army band to play and stuff like that, so that was our down time. But alcohol on a deployment is not always a good thing as far as how people deal with things. So had an incident with a corporal, RAME Corporal who, we had to take his weapons off him because he was a little bit out of control.

Leave

I went to Paris and London for ROCL which is 10 days off. So it was good. Just, was sort of surreal flying from Rwanda to Kenya, then on to European country, then back into it so. Towards the end of the 10 days, yes. I just went, "Why am I going back into this." But I had a job to do, I had to get back. And if I didn't get back, the next guys couldn't go on ROCL or leave. So I had a job, I had to get back.

Local liaisons

So the local populace weren't too bad. They were a bit sceptical of the UN because of what occurred couple of months earlier with the genocide. But, generally, we were pretty well welcomed. Once we got off the armoured vehicles and we talked to the locals, and talked to kids, and kick a soccer ball or something, it was good. That bit was a good part.

The local army were still forming so they were pretty intimidating, they'd point guns at us every corner just about. I just wave them off and keep driving because I was an armoured vehicle, they weren't...So, general populace all right, local army sort of hated us, which is to be expected. There wasn't much of a link between us and them. And we were pretty sceptical of them as well, the retaliation stuff they'd do.

A small UN footprint

Well, when you have a look at the footprint of the UN, we're very small, to be honest. The Brits and the Canadians in the stadium, they went into the logistics, and they were maybe 1000 people, if that. Compared to the population, we were a very small footprint so we can only do as much as we could do. I'd run vehicle checkpoints, I'd try and do as much presence as I could, but it's pretty hard with one armoured vehicle and an infantry section.

But we would try our best to have a presence and say, "Look, we're trying to make your country safe." Now bear in mind, that's in Kigali. The rest of the country, we weren't there unless we went out. We did go out and do like a... Out to the NGO camps or went to Kibeho for two weeks toward the end. So we did try to get out as much as we could to the countryside to do a bit of intel, bit of treatment camps, but also just to say, "Look, we're here and it's safe to go back to your village and the war's over, or genocides over so."

Mexican standoff

So I was at QRF for 31 October 1994. About 4:35, I got a call out saying that a local woman and her son have been getting shot at, someone's trying to steal their cow, or something, or harassing them. So I got a rough grid to where it was in rough directions. Now, this was being conveyed by an Indian liaison officer from the UN, whose English wasn't as great, to the UN headquarters at the stadium to our headquarters and then down to me through the op cell, through Captain Frewen and his team. Got a sort of grid, so on the map, off I went.

I went all the way to this location, which, on the way there I had to run what's called an RPA or RPF check point, which was a kid with an AK, a radio, and two milk crates and a bit of string. And I'll tell you now, milk crates and a bit of string won't stop an armoured vehicle. So he tried to stop me and I said, "Look, get out the road, I'm going." And I literally went and here's the milk crates dangling behind my tracks as I'm driving off. I went to this position, went past it.

On a radio I had communications, and I said, "Look, I'm now off the map. I've passed grid." They said, "Keep going. You should be..." And they were sort of round guiding me to the direction of the area. And I literally got to exactly what they described. It was some kilometres past, so I couldn't give them a grid where I was. Could where I was last off the map. And I got there. Now, lo and behold, this kid that I ran through that roadblock had got a radio and called the QRF of the RPF onto me. So what that meant was three technicals, which are like Hilux's with about 40 kids in them with RPGs, RPK machine guns, AK's, and a major. So an adult and kids.

I got to this position, put the infantry out. They started searching houses looking for these things, couldn't find it, but at that stage, I had got surrounded pretty quickly. It's, luckily, well, the infantry section I had who'd jumped out, they'd gone to ground because they saw what was going on, but the kids didn't know where they were, so that was a bit of a bonus for me. I literally sat there, so it was about 5:00, going towards dusk, and this went on till about 9:30, 10:00 at night.

And every time I'd tell my driver to start up because the headquarters, I'm saying, "Look, I'm surrounded now. These kids are going to... I don't know what's going on, but it's not good." That RPG's two to the front, one to rear. And now, these RPG's could make butter out of me, and would kill us; they're bad. Machine guns, not so much. But bear in mind, these are kids holding these things, and when I mean kids, I'm talking about 8- to 13-year-olds. And it's pretty scary. I remember one funny thing: my driver who was great, he did his drills, he dropped his seat so they couldn't see. He said to me, "Look, what do we do?" Because he's new in the army.

And I said, "Mate." I said, "How do I know, I've shot at Figure 11 targets all my life." I said, "This is new for me." I said, "But look, I'll come up with a plan, we'll work it out." So we had communications. Ironically and silly, the platoon commander and the platoon sergeant jumped in the back. Now I have one section, those two people command three sections or a platoon. Reality, they should have stayed behind, it should have just been me and the other corporal. But they were excited, jumped in the vehicle, and came with us. Now, ironic, the platoon sergeant forgot his webbing, so he had to borrow mine. It was a calamity of errors, but I had top heavy of the platoon command there. I didn't need them but they turned up because they wanted to come along. And that was it. So because I'm the armoured crew commander, I have responsibility of them and the vehicle.

So I have sort of control. Yes, he's the boss, but I'm ultimately responsible tactically about manoeuvring and I just said, "Look, if this goes off and one of these kids accidentally pulls the trigger or trips," I said, "It's on. I'll kill as many as I can, and then try and do push down, do a dogs leg, mount the infantry up. If everyone's still alive by that stage, we'll try and get back." It just panned out, and every time I'd tell him to start up, and here's the CO and everyone back at the headquarters saying, "Get out of there," I'd tell my driver to start the armoured vehicle up. Up comes the RPGs and they said, "Look, you move your dead."

It got to the point and I said, "Well, you're the first I'm going to kill," and that was the major because he was the boss. And, hopefully, I don't know what would happen with the kids but I'd just kill as many as I could before I had to...It ended up, about 9:30, 10:00, I said, "Look, this is going nowhere. We can stay here all night and do this." And he sort of agreed in broken English. And he said, "Look, I'm going to take you back to our military compound." Which ironically, is next to our compound. Literally next door.

So I said, "Yep, fine." So they sort of... Two in front, one behind, took us back. Now, here's the funny thing. As we were coming past our gate, I've already radioed ahead and said, "Look, I want everyone, as many people you can, there were guns because there's a fair few of them." When I come past, I'm like, "Lift the gate up, I'm going to come in, close the gate, and then we're good to go." And it's, how funny. We did. I came hard left, went into the gate, closed the gate, everyone was there literally, even the op cell on the building had guns pointed out of it, which was funny. Everyone had guns, and the other vehicle was manned. And they pulled up in the cars and just went out, "Ah, damn, didn't think of that one." But that saved the day. And my adrenaline and that was going through the roof because it was pretty scary stuff to be surrounded by kids with guns and RPGs.

So, lo and behold, they were pretty inquisitive, the major, about what I had in the back because they couldn't see inside. He got one of the kids to climb up on the back on the front because the driver's periscopes are like three-dimensional, World War One type things. So all this kid saw was a set of eyes looking through, which was my driver sitting in the hole. He put his AK down into the driver's hole because he's scared, the kid didn't know what's going on.

And I put the 50-cal machine gun around with the barrel pointing this far from his face, and I went, "Oi." And the kid looked at me, ran off because that would have turned him into pig mist. So he jumped off. And this RPA major kept pushing the point for those many hours about, "How many soldiers do you have?" I said, "I don't have to tell you, but I know how many you've got," because I knew exactly where they all were.

And funnily enough, he told them all to move and all they did was just move position so they were still there. So my guys... Actually it's dark. We had the sort of IR stuff, so like invisible laser red beams you see in the movies. And I told them, "Look, we're in communications with them." And I said through personal radios, I said, "Look, you need to take out the RPG's first, the kids with those who were on the technicals." So all these little red dots were on these kids.

They couldn't see it, but I could through night vision and stuff. And so that was fall back if we had to hit them first because those things would definitely make holes in me. So that was sort of how I talked to the infantry, that's how we got them. And when he said, "Right, we're going," and they were going to escort us back, I said, "Right, come in now." And then, to their surprise, the kids and this major, out comes these infantry with all guns ready go. And they just looked at them. They were behind them so they didn't know they were there. And they sort of mounted up and then off we went.

Surreal and unconventional times

As you said, everyone dealt with things in different ways. The hospital staff with rudimentary hospital that we sort of cleaned up as soon as we come in, it had loo's with holes in it, still had holes in the walls from where they'd attacked in RPGs. When the guys first got there, they were pulling body parts out of toilets that they'd hacked up and thrown in there. There were a box of grenades out the front which we eventually cleaned up.

Blood and faeces and everything, so the guys did a great job. The engineers. The medics worked in arduous conditions where... I mean, I'd participate in surgeries as well, which, we'd turn up, there wasn't a normal operating theatre. It was the windows were open, they'd be hack sawing someone's leg off and throw in the bin. So yeah, that was rudimentary medicine as best they could. So the doctors, the nurses, the medics literally did a lot of stuff that was unconventional, but they did the best.

From my side, I was more security, so mine was the unknown bit, and to protect them. So at one stage because we had to walk from our compound to the hospital, was about 50-60 metre walk, that would be lined with technicals and the Rwandan army that was next door to us. And they were starting to harass our female soldiers, sailors, and airman and harassing pretty bad. So we then had to escort them armed every time they wanted to go back and forth to go from their little hospital back to the thing. So that was a point that additional tasks and stuff we always did. So yeah, we had to put up with that. As I said, a day in life is strange. Like I was doing nightclub raids in an armoured vehicle to arrest British and Canadian soldiers that had jumped the fence. So with the military police. So that was pretty surreal to go raiding a nightclub in an armoured vehicle.

Getting out

Yes, because we were the 1st contingent, 2nd contingent, which was Timmsy, his crew were coming in. Also, an armoured vehicle handover which is quite in depth, you got to tell them all about the armoured vehicles, where they're at, probably bit of servicing requirements. And they virtually said, "Look, we're just infantry guys off from 5-7. We're armour." And they literally said, "Look, we're just tarping them there and tarping them up." So things changed a fair bit.

They didn't do as much patrolling. Which I don't know why, but that was the new CO's call. They literally put a tarp over them and set them down there from all and sundry, from what I've been told. So this is in a two-day period, and we just want to get the hell out of country, we'd had enough. And we said, “Good luck” So because they weren't going to patrol like me, I didn't get the chance to take them out to all the places. At the same time, in that 48-hour period, they flew some psyches in, which is our site debrief.

Ideally, it was Holly, the civilian psychologist, in a uniform. Literally, civilian guys. He sat 12 of us around in a circle from different areas, so we didn't all know each other personally. And just said, "Look, has anyone got any problems?" And we said, "Look, we just want to get the hell out of here." And he said, "Look, if any you got any problems, here's my business card in my private practice, give me a call when you get back." And that was it. Done.

A difficult mission

For me, it was pretty surreal as a 23-year-old. My first dead bodies and anything was that airport, and then on for the rest of the trip. I don't know. It's left me with a lot of dark black humour. I don't have much empathy or sympathy for things. Get quite angry. So to me everything's black and white. And I'd have to admit, I did change after that job. I've since deployed to East Timor, and in effect, Iraq 2007 and 2008. So, I think for me, and I do a lot of presentations on Rwanda about difficult deployments.

For me, it was one. Certainly changed me a lot as a person. But I was a career soldier and I'd stayed in for another 24 years plus after that, so 32 years in the army. I only just recently discharged last year, but I do reserve work now. So, me, it's about educating the next lot of soldiers, sailors, airmen, or officers, and I do a lot of talks at ADFA and RMC about: ‘be prepared for the unexpected'. I hope no one ever does a deployment ever again. And I'm pretty sure Australian Government wouldn't sign up for that sort of stuff. They didn't know what was going on, we just contributed to something we didn't know we were going to do.