Rwanda - Canadian Armed Forces in Rwanda

(Monty Penney)
Go to Rwanda 1994... to witness the aftermath of the killings of 750,000 people... I was exposed to mass graves... I exhumed bodies of mothers and children still swaddled, their heads were smashed... I’ve seen multiple mine injuries... disease and death was everywhere... and the society had totally gone mad.

(Jean Yves St. Denis)
The first sight I had, when I came, I landed at the airport, got into a jeep with another Canadian and he drove me home and he said, “Oh by the way, when you get up that hill be careful, there’s a dead woman in the middle of the street that’s rotting away.”

(Jerry Deveau)
Hundreds of thousands of bodies were everywhere in the country, literally. 

(Etienne Paulin)
Ça sentait pas ben ben bon quand on est arrivé là. L’odeur avec la chaleur, c’était vraiment suffocant. 

(Jean Yves St. Denis)
I saw a hospital who had a pile of bodies, maybe 20 feet high in front of that, you know, just laying there. 

(Jerry Deveau)
There were so many that most of us got fairly adept at being able to tell by the smell if the bodies were a couple of days old, couple of weeks old, a month old, or whatever. 


(Mike Desmeules)
When we walk in Rwanda, you always have to watch where you were going and watch the people because who are they? We don’t know. 

(Denis Allaire)
If you were not part of that particular tribe or family tree, their cattle was worth more than you were. 

(Etienne Paulin)
J’ai parlé souvent avec des jeunes Hutus au point d’eau. J’ai venu que j’ai fait des contacts là-bas. Puis ça avait pas plus que 12, 13 ans. Je leur ai demandé, pour eux autres, tuer un Tutsi c’était comme un jeu, comme une personne va à la chasse. Pas plus de remord de conscience, pas plus... Ils en parlent avec le gros sourire fendu jusqu’aux oreilles. 

(Jerry Deveau)
We drove through the city, had to stop at checkpoints and, while they had a firefight fifty feet in front of us. And sit there and watch guys get killed and bleed out right there, and when you’re looking out the window you’re watching a guy bleed out and then the fighting stops, the shooting stops and you, you know the UN vehicle is sent through the checkpoint. 

(Etienne Paulin)
Fait que ça briserait n’importe quel homme qui a un coeur dans le corps. Pis même ceux qui n’en ont pas, ils en trouveraient un.

(Denis Allaire)
And you’re just in disbelief to see how far human beings can go to serve an end. 

(Mike Desmeules)
We went to a stadium in Kigali, Rwanda. We stayed at a stadium for, that’s where our, we were stationed at that stadium. No running water, no electricity, nothing. It was very dirty when we got there. We had to clean, first thing we did. 

(Etienne Paulin)
Pis le plancher du stade était brun, pis c’était un beau stade, tu voyais que c’était du marbre poli mais c’était brun. Et puis quand tu avais le malheur d’échapper un peu d’eau dessus, tu voyais que c’était des déchets humains, organiques, qui étaient à terre, ça sentait ! 

(Mike Desmeules)
We didn’t have any cots then. We slept on the floor in a sleeping bag and big rats came out to our place and oh my god, they was the size of a cat !

(Jean Yves St. Denis)
We had to survive sometimes on eating with perished goods or whatever we could find so there was no support and it was very difficult.

(Denis Allaire)
Our hands were tied, you couldn’t protect yourselves or the local population.

(Jean Yves St. Denis)
You’re dodging bullets, you’re trying, you get frustrated because the UN is not there and can not provide you with the resources you’re looking for and you’re wondering all the time, “Why am I here? ”

(Etienne Paulin)
On entendait des chiens japper, des chiens hurler, on entendait des plaintes, des coups de feu, du mitraillage, des cris des personnes qui hurlaient, ça avait l’air des femmes et des enfants. 

(Jean Yves St. Denis)
So I slept with a loaded pistol underneath my pillow and a fully semi-automatic weapon charged on the side my bed. I said, ‘I want to go home, I want to make sure I’m going home not in a body bag’, I guess. 

(Jerry Deveau)
I don’t care who you are, you can not train and prepare for that amount of, you know that type of horror and misery and death. You just don’t.

(Jean Yves St. Denis)
It was an aberration of life.

(Mike Desmeules)
It stays with you forever.