COMBAT CAMERA Feature article by Sarah Elizabeth Brown THE CHRONICLE-JOURNAL
Soldier carries gun and camera in hot spots
BY SARAH ELIZABETH BROWN THE CHRONICLE-JOURNAL Standing on HMCS Winnipeg's flight deck at dusk, watching sailors run laps as their frigate steams through the Arabian Sea, Sgt. Frank Hudec sees pictures. As a Canadian Forces Combat Camera photographer, he carries a camera along with his flak vest and gun. "You could be out there just looking around "Oh yeah, photographically there's nothing happening here. The sun's set and there's these guys running around," said Hudec, 44, who was born and raised in Thunder Bay. "But if you take a time exposure, the camera sees things that your eye doesn't. "I always take my tripod with me - I tend to take a lot of pictures at twilight," said Hudec.
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"It's gorgeous in the Gulf right at twilight, just after sunset when you have a moonrise, nice calm seas and the ship's zooming along." Working in a group of three - public affairs officer, videographer and photographer Hudec spent August on the Winnipeg as it patrolled the Persian Gulf. The Combat Camera crew slept and worked out of a sonar instrument room and recorded everyday life refuelling, naval boardings, pickup hockey games on deck. Trying not to get lost in the labyrinth below decks and enduring rough seas were side benefits. Whenever and wherever Canadian soldiers, sailors or pilots go on overseas missions, Hudec and his co-workers go too - cameras,
SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA Sailors run on the flight deck of HMCS Winnipeg in the Gulf of Oman in August.
laptops, batteries and satellite phones in tow along with their military gear. Of approximately 225 photographers in the Canadian military, a dozen serve with Combat Camera. When civilian journalists aren't around, Combat Camera footage and photos make the country's newscasts and newspapers, showing folks back home what their military is up to. This year, Hudec spent a month in Kabul, Afghanistan, another in the Persian Gulf and six weeks with the military's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) in Pakistan after a massive earthquake devastated the region.
SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA Officer on watch at twilight, HMCS Winnipeg, Arabian Gulf.
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In February he heads to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Combat Camera shutterbugs aren't home much, Hudec said in a telephone interview from his Ottawa Residence. "For me, to get a good picture of our troops at work, you want to not only show the soldier, you want to show the environment, the people." said Hudec, who originally figured the locals in Afghanistan would be camera-shy. "Especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, people just love having their picture taken - it's an honour," he said. "It's like, 'Cool - makes my job really easy."
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SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA Village elder, Kashmir, Pakistan.
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Even if he doesn't speak the same language, Hudec's Nikon D2X helps him connect when he shows someone the photo he just took of them. "And man, you see the smiles - that brings them out." He's never taken pictures in a firefight, but photographing the military has inherent dangers, from landslides in Pakistan's mountains to landmines in Afghanistan. "One of the most dangerous things is driving around," Hudec said. "In Kabul, I think there's two, three million people and no traffic lights." SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA A Canadian soldier trains Afghan National Army soldiers, Kabul, Afghanistan.
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SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA A Canadian Forces Coyote armoured vehicle on patrol near the King's Palace, Kabul, Afghanistan.
"All the time there's dangers, but you never think about them. You don't want to think about them, otherwise you'll never go out." While his job is to take pictures, he's still a soldier. Before anyone goes overseas, training and immunizations must be current. He stays fit by biking to work, summer and winter, and spends an hour in the Department of National Defence gym to start his workday. There are some things photos can't capture.
They can show sailors clambering between ships, often without ladders, while searching vessels in the Persian Gulf. What a picture can't show is how tough that is to do while ocean swells bat the boats about. "Sometimes you're hanging on for dear life there," said Hudec, "Wow, it's an adrenaline rush, big time." They also can't show how much body armour, webbing full of ammunition, two litres of water, a helmet and a rifle all weigh during the 40C temperatures of a midday patrol in Kabul.
SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA A Canadian soldier searches a burka-clad woman at a traffic checkpoint outside Kabul, Afghanistan.
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'And with us, plus our camera gear," said Hudec. "You've got to be very physically fit to handle all that, and at the end of it, you've got to try and take these cool pictures." In Pakistan in November, DART initially didn't have helicopters. In the Himalayan foothills, that meant six or seven hours of mountain hiking each day. Photographing DART was different for Hudec since the Canadian military personnel didn't have to carry guns or wear flak vests. And it was a chance for the sergeant to see the level of care DART provides, something he calls "impressive."
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SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA A Canadian soldier stands sentry in a LAV armoured fighting vehicle during a road move in Kabul, Afghanistan.
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In one medical mission DART personnel treated a little boy whose broken arm had been splintered with colouring books for a month. The Canadians also came across a sevenmonths-pregnant woman with a broken pelvis, which she'd endured for a month since the earthquake. Villagers carried the woman, on a bed, up several hundred metres of mountainside goat track to the helicopter landing site. "We thought we'd beat them," said Hudec. "No way. They were way ahead of us. We were huffing and puffing."
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SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA A Canadian DART medic treats a little boy in the aftermath of an earthquake near Kashmir, Pakistan.
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"The Pakistani villager's resilience - and sheer physical fitness is unreal," he said. "Some of the patrols we were on, these people have nothing and yet they invite you in or they bring you out tea. When you see stuff like that, it's very, very touching."
SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA A DART medic tends to a pregnant woman with a broken pelvis in the remote mountain village of Palhot Bala, Pakistan.
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SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA Villagers along the earthquake-stricken Jhelum River valley are seen near Bandi Tagian, Pakistan.
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Attending Friday prayers in the local mosque with Canadian officers born in Pakistan and being present when the first baby was born in the DART medical camp are among his collection of Combat Camera memories. Before he and his co-workers could begin recording DART's Pakistan mission, they set up from nothing. Assigned a bit of earth, they built a structure to keep out the weather, found an electrical line and set up power bars and a work area. "It's very primitive," Hudec said. "It's not like sitting in an office. Yet we've got all this hightech equipment."
SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA LCol Arshad Saeed attends Friday prayers in a local mosque in Garhi Dopatta, Pakistan
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SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA An International Security Assistance Force CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter at work in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Soldiering happens outside, and despite topof-the-line equipment that's serviced regularly, gear fails. Hudec tapes plastic wrap over his laptop keyboard and tries not to change lenses when a helicopter blows by overhead, raising everpresent dust. "They spend so much money flying us halfway around the world on these missions, we've got back-up laptops, backup cameras, backup video - everything."
SGT FRANK HUDEC/CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA Canadian soldiers in Light Armoured Vehicles patrol outside of Kabul, Afghanistan.
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