The structure of some virtually free pro- groups

We prove two conjectures on pro- groups made by Herfort, Ribes and Zalesskii. The first says that a finitely generated pro- group which has an open free pro- subgroup of index is a free pro- product , where the are free pro- of finite rank and the are cyclic of order . The second says that if is a free pro- group of finite rank and is a finite -group of automorphisms of , then is a free factor of . The proofs use cohomology, and in particular a ``Brown theorem' for profinite groups.