Original subtitles

You're alive and having this wonderful time, and the situation changes like

that.

It was hour after hour after hour of violent horror.

I mean, I remember it so clearly, I could think there is no good way out

of this.

I imagine Africa is a lot of things for a lot of people.

But for me, it was a dream from when I was in grade school, certainly. My

crayon drawings and so forth were all of African wildlife.

It was home sweet home from the moment I stepped foot on the ground.

There isn't a thing out here that can't out -hear you, out -see you, out -smell

you, out -run you, out -climb you, out -swim you, out -hide you, out -hunt you.

But I think that it's not an inherently dangerous place. It really isn't.

Without a doubt, there's more cruelty among people than there is among

Windy is a dramatic forest.

I mean, it's incredibly steep.

And you have these huge trees that burst out into the sky.

But when you step in, it is really instantaneously a different world.

It's almost like a movie set because it's so dramatic.

Rob and Susan were a guide's dream.

They loved being together.

They loved watching one another in a new environment and seeing how the other

reacted to it. And it was obvious that they were completely in love. And that's

always great to be around.

It was far more than a vacation or even an experience. It was a chance to delve

into a world so different from theirs.

And that takes courage.

They both had that in huge quantities.

The gorillas was going to be a highlight.

You've got approximately 650 mountain gorillas in the world.

There's always an enticement about uniqueness and rarity.

That gets everyone, me included, really eager to be there.

You just can't believe those are actually mountain gorillas that close to

this setting.

And Susan and Rob were in heaven.

It doesn't fit even looking back on it that you can have an experience like

and 24 hours later you can just have this absolute hell of a lifetime.

The light was just slowly coming up.

Went out under the little wooden veranda.

And it's always a special time for me because sometime just before dawn,

invariably all the birds start calling.

That dawn chorus was interrupted by what I thought was a tree cracking and

falling. And it was a splitting...

tearing, cracking sound. It wasn't like boom.

It was like this.

As it actually went up the valley.

And then two or three more.

And I realized that it was gunfire.

My first thoughts were, you know, I need to get near my guest.

I came upon Rob.

Go back inside. I'll find out what's going on. I told him, get back inside.

Don't come down.

I still thought it might have just been rangers testing weapons.

And this sort of ragtag kind of silhouette appears in front of me.

I hear the ground go over my shoulder and slap through the vegetation.

And boy, that stopped me running.

I'm actually thinking it's just a robbery.

I mean, that certainly has happened in other countries in East Africa.

Camps, lodges, vehicles have certainly been held up at gunpoint and even

tourists shot dead.

So I'm thinking, okay, I could be dead already.

But I'm actually thinking it's probably just a...

an organized armed robbery.

He's gone into my pocket.

He tore off the watch.

And he's looking up at me and really keeping his eyes on me as he's searching

through me.

I've carried a knife.

since I was probably five or six years old.

I feel quite naked without it.

And that really made me boil.

But you can't do much about it, because all you're going to do is bring down a

world of hurt on yourself.

Of course, in the context of things that were going to be lost as the day went

on, it pales in comparison.

It is just the two of us coming down this dark tunnel, but all of a sudden it

wasn't just this behind me and myself and the dark.

All of a sudden it was light, it was activity, and a whole lot of people.

people. There was all this activity.

There were all these guys.

There were all these weapons.

There was all this action going on.

Guys drinking beer and smashing things down and stealing boxes and stealing

clothes. Obviously wearing clothes that they've already taken from other

tourists somewhere.

But the first impression confirmed what I was surmising. This is just an armed

robbery.

I mean, I was certainly completely, blissfully unaware of where this was all

going to head in the next 15, 20 minutes.

The situation was chaotic and was not getting calmer. Everything was going the

other direction.

These guys are really kind of going crazy, running around the area, looting

place. And they're taking a really sadistic pleasure in terrifying us, and

already really, really terrified.

And then I saw Rob and Susan.

They are both very, very pale, and Susan needed physical support.

She's a strong, strong woman.

um woman she's not a woman you're gonna mess with it was a little surprising to

see her so caved in and dependent on sort of rob's support i mean i'll just

ride this out they're gonna rob this place and loot us let them do it and get

away and then i see this french woman

and i think she's completely out of control she's yelling in french to these

guys and gesticulating crazily she's got three teenage girls and i'm sure that's

what's got her wound up and i'm sure rape is a distinct possibility but boy

thinking this lady is going about this the absolute wrong way

and i'm fairly fluent in q

swahili so i can hear them talking you know she's crazy just just get rid of

just kill her

I was desperately trying to think of something to do.

But I don't think there was any hope in hell of

accomplishing anything.

Then she's taken away with these young girls, and that was another

sad...

escalation of the whole situation.

As long as I had Robin and Susan with me Basically, that's the most I could hope

for in that situation.

They were up and they were moving, but it was almost an arbitrary line drawn

behind Rob and Susan.

And whether you stayed or whether you went was a fateful outcome over which

had no choice.

road and started ascending a path that went back into the main jungle.

And boy, I thought this is just gone from a sprint to a marathon. We are in

for a long, long time.

And I looked around and I was shocked to look down and realize, holy cow,

there are a lot of these guys here.

And I quickly counted 117 of them.

So no, I did not think it was a normal robbery. And that sort of rocked me

I think the disappearance of the French women perhaps had more impact on me than

I thought.

I felt myself slipping away.

And it felt really good to slip away.

It was like scuba diving.

And everything is now in a slower motion. And everything is muted.

And you can't hear.

I mean, you can sort of hear, but you don't really hear.

You still see color.

Not much.

It's all gone gray.

And you feel very withdrawn from it. And unfortunately, it feels very, very good

to be withdrawn from it.

I was eventually jolted out of that, ironically, by one of the rebels.

Put down these...

tape recorders, and they were strutting around and waving their machine guns,

and they were going, dance, dance.

Others were already gone, almost completely checked out.

Almost like they were drugged low, dancing to a very fast, hard, heavy

I thought, come hell or high water, you're not going to get me to dance.

And it sounds really stupid, you know, now looking back on it, get killed

because you refused to dance.

But I don't care.

I was that angry. I was that stupid.

I was that stubborn.

When

I

refused to dance, he just clubbed me across the lower back. And I tell you,

absolutely paralyzed me.

But I think in a lot of ways it snapped me to, it gave me resolve, it gave me

purpose, and it certainly got me missile -locked back on the present situation.

I hadn't come up with any plan at that stage other than just try and stay alive

and keep Rob and Susan with me.

But it was really heartbreaking to watch Rob.

start to withdraw.

Rob's tremendous capacity for empathy and feelings also left him exposed

to being shocked emotionally into numbness.

And one of the horrid prices of that was that it left Susan alone.

An hour or two after we'd started cross -country, this commander came and said,

in a questioning way, you know, do you know who we are?

And he, to my surprise, and certainly to my alarm as well, came out and said,

we're in Dharahamwe.

When he said that they were in Dharahamwe, it was gut -level

The sheer magnitude of what took place in Rwanda has no comparison.

And it was an intensely personal, face -to -face type of killing.

Children were tied to their mothers and thrown into rivers.

Children were intentionally raped and dismembered in front of the eyes of

parents, only to be killed in the end, and then to have their parents killed as

well.

Such an incredible division in villages that previously had been so close that

the very child you grew up with is now hunting you down to kill you and your

family by hand. Not with grenades, not with rifles, but looking you in the eye

as he hacked down your sister and then hacked down you.

I was certainly scared. I was scared right down and through.

If you were part of that war, you are so inured to killing, to hacking

to death, to dismembering, to raping, that we're frighteningly irrelevant in

scheme of things.

Almost the last three hours solid had been cross -country through this jungle.

And there is something to long, drawn -out hours of terror that

is different.

It's just off the chart in terms of what you are emotionally able to deal with.

And not so much the pain, but core fear at that level is a very

different thing.

I've been stalked by lions that wanted to kill me.

And even that is hugely different.

It was hour after hour after hour of absolute

terror.

Your body is trying so hard to just survive the situation that systems are

shutting down.

Rob and Susan are moving it sort of one third time. They're just

almost like slow motion robots moving along.

You know, as I watched Susan in particular, she was stumbling more and

holding up this entire massively long parade of people.

It was obvious that something was going to have to be done if she was going to

stay alive.

It was obvious to me that Susan was just not going to be able to keep going.

And so that's when I started to come up with a plan to try and at least get

Susan out of there.

Because there are no rules in a knife fight. You don't know if any action you

is going to save someone or end up killing the person you're trying to

And you're trying to read the body language of these people that you're

see if as I reach for this person to help this person even if it's over a

Could that be construed that this person's too slow?

You know what? We don't need her. Pow!

And you've killed her by showing the fact that she's slower.

And yet if you don't help her and she starts to fall behind, they'll kill her

because she's now holding up the entire escape of this rebel army.

And so I felt damned if I do and damned if I don't. And God, that's a horrible

place to be because you...

You want to act. You want desperately to keep these people alive, and yet the

very things that you're trying to do to keep them alive may be their deathbed.

Citizen collapses went down a number of times.

Before the last time she went down, you couldn't get her back up.

I held Disney's face in my

hands. I couldn't even get her to sort of look with her eyes. Her eyes were

and just... I couldn't even physically get a response.

You've got to get up.

You know,

she couldn't breathe. She just, she physically was incapable of going

farther.

I was probably more fearful at this point than I had been the entire day.

I thought they were going to kill Susan at any second.

I've never seen someone have a heart attack, but this is what it must be

So I thought, well, hey, maybe if I just tell them, look, she's got a heart

condition, just let her go, just let her go, you know.

Maybe that'll work.

Mama, where are we going to?

I don't know where we're going to.

You're wrong.

You're wrong.

I don't think Susan was frightened, as silly as that may sound.

I don't believe she was frightened. I think she was way past that. She's gone

beyond that.

Commander came back down the line.

I spoke to him in Kikwaihele and

said, you know, she's just got a bad heart.

Can we please just, you know, can we let her go back? Can we let her go back?

He can go back. We have to move on.

I didn't think they'd ever go for it.

But he did.

Get up.

So I started telling Susan again and again and again, downhill.

Just always go downhill and you'll eventually come out. But I'm not sure if

anything registered.

And she didn't walk off. We ended up walking off.

and leaving her there.

And I was surprised that she didn't watch us disappear.

She was just sort of standing there looking across the valley, and I don't

she was aware that we were moving away from her. I don't think she was aware

that Rob was moving away from her.

I thought there'd be an emotional or a tearful, you know, goodbye or farewell

between Rob and Susan, and it was really a non -event.

And that's still...

Really heartbreaking.

Because that was, as it turned out, that was their final goodbye.

And it just slipped away.

There was no way of knowing what was going to happen with the rest of us,

golly, you know, at least Susan was out of there, and that was a...

Fantastic start.

There were a number of people now between me and Rob, and I could look

see Rob, and it looked like he was getting worse.

And yet, I couldn't come up with any way to help him regain an awareness of

where he was and what was going on or who he was with.

But I thought, you know, if we got Susan out of here, maybe I could get Rob out

of here.

and then they brought us to a stop.

You could tell there was dissent among the rebels. I thought perhaps they

were lost.

The fact that the rebels now weren't sure where they were going, for me, was

good news.

And we were stopped there for probably 20 minutes. So they were obviously

unsure of what to do. And that's going to probably roll downhill onto us.

And then they sort of come back, up on your feet, on your feet, up, up, up.

We didn't realize what was going on. We didn't realize we were being split.

And as I came by Rob, I tried to hook Rob,

not knowing what was going on, but just wind him with me again.

But the rebel stopped me.

And it was a violent blow.

It was a blow so violent that days later I was still passing blood from it.

I turned and looked back at Rob, and we looked at each other very clearly, and

I think we both knew

that that was the end.

I think Rob looked...

Very resigned to me. He didn't make any motions or shrug. It was just

complete resignation and sadness.

I think there was something in both of us that knew that was the last time we

would see each other.

And we didn't have any choice in that.

And then I was forced to keep moving.

But it was undeniable that that was a...

a major turning point and that was a major turning point for the worse.

We're in this huge jungle and now we're down to just us.

We were over 30 people.

Now there's me and five people, and all five of us sit into a space that's 15

feet or 10 feet long.

I've never ever entered my mind that someone would come after us.

You can't see through that canopy.

You could fly right over it and not see us directly underneath you.

But if we were worthless at that point, we'd have already been dead.

So there was some reason that they hadn't killed us.

And this commander, when he next came by, which was actually on that steep

section of trail, mentioned American policy and that we'd ignored the

in Rwanda and so forth. But then it dawned on me, okay, we can convey that

message for him. And I suggest, why don't you put down what you want to say.

and I will get it to the hands of the U .S. ambassador.

And I think I expected an explosive response or a violent response, but he

didn't say yes, no, or maybe, and just turned around and walked back up the

line.

I didn't think about life or death.

I mean, maybe I did.

But at one point, I was startled to hear all the birds call. The great blue

taracos started calling and the yellow spotted barbets.

And I felt two things. I was surprised that the forest was still functioning.

But I remember listening to calls and appreciating the calls and actually just

almost automatically naming the sounds of the birds that were calling.

like it was just a regular old safari, and then feeling guilty for doing that.

You know, people are living or dying now, and here you are off, still

like a safari guide.

And right at that point, one of the rebels came from behind,

and I had no idea where he'd come from or what he had been doing.

Then it was... Unbelievably steep.

And I just wanted him away from us.

And so I reached out my hand for him, you know, just to get him past us and

and gone.

And that was the last I saw of him.

And of course at that time I had no idea. The fresh blood that was still on

and smeared on me was...

was from people he just hacked again.

I don't think the others knew that we were rapidly reaching a point of no

return.

They were just trying to keep moving along, unaware of the

significance of this ridge that we were approaching.

I was quite fearful that we were approaching the Congo border, and I

knew things would have to change when we got to the border.

And then all of a sudden, we were at the Congo.

And it was startling, and it was certainly alarming, because now here we

Rebels fanned around waiting for us. Maybe 70, 80, 100 rebels

sort of jammed into the space anticipating our arrival there.

I sort of only came up with two possibilities.

with what would happen when we got to the Congo, and there

was no good answer for sure.

One answer was, they've got out of there, kill us.

You know, they don't want anyone identifying, so just kill them. Just

six out of 800 deaths.

And the other answer is, keep us alive because they need the labor.

to do laundry, to do cooking, to work the field, to become soldiers, to be

prostitutes. And obviously, it's not the letter of too evil, it's just too

evil.

Listen to me.

I know who these people are.

The others in the group, I don't want to terrify them, but I want them to be

somewhat prepared.

The Marines are homeward. They've already killed a million people.

But this thing turns into a free fall. Just remember what I told you.

Downhill, downhill, downhill.

It's the only way out. And so I tell them, keep running no matter what.

And all the guns in hell were going off simultaneously, and you were still able

to run downhill.

Keep running downhill.

Downhill, you can't go wrong.

And then this one rebel...

grabs Danny and says, she's coming with me.

And nobody stopped him.

Boy, I thought, what a life in the Congo for a woman in a rebel camp.

And I decided to not let that happen. And if we die in the process,

okay.

It wasn't sort of a panic impulse response, but it was, I have got to get

girl away from this guy now, because these guys call all the shots.

No!

No! Well, I grabbed Amy.

And thank God she collapsed backwards, and she falls backwards, and the rebel

can't hang on to her.

Hey! Hey!

I stepped over her and over her legs and

just stand there.

I'm

sure

I'm scared.

And I'm furious and I'm all out of options.

Now there are no cards left to play. Now there's no subtlety left. It is now

time to call it.

Someone took my knife.

I want my knife back.

Someone took my knife and I want my knife back.

I want my knife back.

There was this massive pregnant pause among everybody, and I looked at the

commander, and I can remember all these faces turned to see what he was going to

do about this.

But nobody moved, nobody did anything.

Everybody just kind of stayed there.

What else do you want from us?

Why are we here?

You've robbed us.

You've humiliated us.

And on top of that, somebody took my knife, and I want my knife back!

Who's got my knife?

I don't think a cricket squeaked.

And I looked at the commander, and he looked at me, and he just

kind of smiled.

And then, almost right away, paper and pen were

produced. And he writes all this stuff down.

He hands it to me and says, read it.

All of Africa's at war.

When we come back, no talk, no negotiating,

no hostages.

We kill everyone on the spot.

I reiterated my promise that I would personally put it in the hands of the U

ambassador, and I put it in my pocket.

And then they turned and walked off, and we were totally alone.

No rebels, no nothing.

Just us.

I don't think any of us knew quite what to do right away. It was so total and so

fast to change.

And then it was, you know, we have got to go. We have got to get out of here.

But it's not a joyous, loud...

raucous occasion.

It's surprisingly somber, but we had hours of difficult

hiking ahead of us.

Just as it got dark, we were at the top of a steep descent, and I looked down

and I could see bodies on the right side of the trail.

It was all I could do to not just run away.

And I immediately turned to the others and said, you know, wait here, stay

And I went on down the trail to the bodies that were down below.

There were the bodies of three women.

The one closest to the trail.

was Susan.

I just couldn't believe that Susan hadn't made it back.

She hadn't gone anywhere.

This was the spot where they had said she could go but she'd never gone

anywhere.

And for me I suddenly flashed back on the guy that I had helped across the

and slippery And I realized that this guy must have been the guy or one of the

guys that killed Susan and the other two women that I didn't know.

And I am acutely aware of the

fact that my attempt to get Susan released got

Susan murdered.

A few of us lived, a lot died, a tremendous number of lives were ruined,

the rebels that captured us disappeared over the ridge and were gone.

For what?

I'm continually plagued, even at this point years later, what could I have

differently? What decision did I make that was wrong?

Could I have somehow, when this guy slammed this rifle butt into my stomach

when I tried to pull Rob to his feet, what if I had allowed myself to collapse

and stayed with Rob?

And you try not to answer the questions or ask the questions.

But the questions never stop repeating, repeating, repeating, and you replay the

chess game. And it goes nowhere because you still feel the tremendous

weight and hollowness of the unchangeable sadness, and those that

died are still dead.